[infinispan-dev] Development process and handling of PRs

[Tristan Tarrant]

Hi all,

there is something about our current development model which I feel is 
holding us back a little. This is caused by a number of issues:

- Handling Pull Requests: we are really slow at doing this. When issuing 
a PR, a developer expects at least one review to happen within the next 
half-day at most. Instead, requests sit in the queue for days (weeks) 
before they even get considered. I don't expect everybody to just drop 
what they are doing and review immediately, but at least be a bit more 
reactive.
- It seems like we're always aiming for the perfect PR. Obviously a PR 
should have zero failures, but we should be a bit more iterative about 
the way we make changes. This is probably also a consequence of the 
above: why should I break up my PR into small chunks, if it takes so 
long to review each one and the cumulative delay is detrimental to my 
progress. I like what Pedro has done for his locking changes.
- We're afraid of changes, but that's what a development phase is for, 
especially for a new major release. We should be a bit more aggressive 
with trying things out. A PR can be merged even if there are some 
concerns (obviously not from a fundamental design POV), and it can be 
refined in later steps.

This is what I would like to see in Beta2:
- The functional API (I can take care of rebasing the PR)
- The management console
- The query grouping/aggregation stuff
- anything else we can merge soon

I would like to release Wednesday at the latest, so please do your best 
to help in achieving this goal.

Tristan
-- 
Tristan Tarrant
Infinispan Lead
JBoss, a division of Red Hat