[infinispan-dev] Let's stop with pull requests

[Bela Ban]

+1000. I completely agree that if someone has to handle tens of pull 
requests per day, he will *not* seriously look into the request, test it 
etc. So IMO this is a farce, and we might as well go back to trusting 
people, rather than wasting their time...



On 5/25/12 1:47 PM, Sanne Grinovero wrote:
> guys, please don't take me as the one who is again complaining about
> failing tests; I'm having doubts about the development process and the
> amount of time this is wasting on all of us.
>
> We're all humans and do mistakes, still it happens so extremely often
> that this is getting systemic, and discipline could definitely be
> improved: people regularly send pull requests with failing tests or
> broken code, and very regularly this is just merged in master.
>
> I did it myself a couple of days ago: didn't notice a failure, all
> looked good, sent a pull, it was merged with no complaints. Three days
> later, I resume my work and am appalled to see that it was broken. Now
> fixing it, but I'll have to send another pull and wait for it - which
> feels very pointless, as I'm pretty sure nobody is checking anyway.
>
> It looks like as the pull request procedure is having this effect:
>
>   # patch writer is not as carefull as he used to be: "someone else
> will check if it's fine or not. I have no time to run the tests
> again..".
>
>   # reviewer has as quick look. "Looks good - in fact I don't care
> much, it's not my code and need to return to my own issues.. worst
> case someone else will fix it blaming the original author"
>
> And then again some incomplete test makes it to master, or a patch
> which doesn't even compile is integrated.
>
> This pull request process is being a big failure. Shall we stop
> wasting time on it and just push on master?
>
> Which doesn't mean I'm suggesting "let's make it worse" | "unleash
> hell": we should all take responsibility on any change very seriously.
>
> Again, I'm not enjoying the role of "whom who complains on the
> testsuite again". Just stating a fact, and trying to propose something
> to make it work better. We have great individuals on this team, but we
> need to admit that team work isn't working and we should deal with it
> at it's best; denying it won't help.
>
> Cheers,
> Sanne


-- 
Bela Ban, JGroups lead (http://www.jgroups.org)