[webkit-dev] Comment on the bug & email author/reviewer before reverting a patch

[Brady Eidson]

> On Jul 9, 2014, at 4:45 PM, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org> wrote:
> 
> On Wednesday, July 9, 2014, Brady Eidson <beidson at apple.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Jul 9, 2014, at 4:15 PM, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org> wrote:
>> 
>>  Again, im not requesting anything new here. The consensus on webkit-dev has been to ping the author/reviewer on IRC or via email and comment in the original bug PRIOR to using webkitbot to start reverting the patch.
> 
> I went through the first handful of emails on that thread.  The original request that wasn’t meeting a lot of opposition before I stopped digging through the thread was:
> “Please contact the author/reviewer and give them a reasonable amount of time before rolling out their patch.”
> 
> I did not reach the message where the consensus was “contact the author and reviewer manually, do not use webkitbot”
> 
> I believe that using webkitbot:
> 1 - Comments in a new bugzilla created specifically because there’s an issue
> 2 - Comments in the original bugzilla notifying of an issue
> 
> It doesn't. The bot only files a new bug, make it a blocker of the original bug, and then reopen the bug.

I just tried this on IRC with a patch of mine.

webkitbot:
1 - Filed a new bug
2 - Included my rollout reason in the new bug
3 - Reopened the original bug
4 - Commented in the original bug “This is re-opened since this is blocked by bug xxxxx”
5 - Announced to the reviewer and author on IRC that this is taking place.

> It doesn't copy over any comments made in the new bug for example.

When was this mentioned as a requirement?

The requirement was that the patch author and reviewer get contacted.  They definitely are, as they have been pinged on IRC and directly CC’ed on the rollout bug.
Additionally, anybody CC’ed on the original bug also gets CC email notifying them of the bug they can follow for the rollout if they wish.

What is the purpose of copying comments between these two bugzillas?

> Assuming my webkitbot command contains a description of the reason this patch is suspect, including a URL to the failure, can you further explain why using webkitbot is unreasonable?
> 
> I'm not saying that using webkitbot is unreasonable. I'm saying that the person trying to revert a patch should first inform the author/reviewer first BEFORE start reverting the patch.

Right, and since I haven’t cq+’ed the rollout patch at this stage, I have contacted the author/reviewer BEFORE reverting the patch.

> Since webkitbot doesn't automatically post the details as to what failures the patch caused, and one line description is almost never adequate (e.g. needs a hyperlink to buildbot page, test failure diff or error log, et c...), I don't see how using webkitbot in its current state could ever be adequate.

“This patch is a candidate for being rolled out because the build-bots have conclusively indicated it as breaking the build.  Please take a look within ~3 hours of this bug being filed or I will cq+ the rollout. The description of the build failure and details on why I think this patch broke things can be found here:  http://build.webkit.org/details/for/the/breakage”

That can be told to webkitbot today.  Is that not sufficient?  If not, why not?

~Brady
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-dev/attachments/20140709/0e9269ad/attachment.html>