[infinispan-dev] Development process and handling of PRs

[Tristan Tarrant]

On 21/07/2015 13:31, Dan Berindei wrote:
> Lately we've had a lot of PRs that take more than 4 hours just to read
> and try to remember what was going on in the code that's being
> modified. If I issue a PR modifying 50+ files (which I freely admit
> I've done in the past) I definitely don't expect the first review pass
> to be done within a day.

Of course not. But it also doesn't mean that days can go by even for 
1-liners.

>> - 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
>
> First of all, I'm not sure our zero failures policy works. I know more
> about core, so I try to make sure PRs I review don't introduce random
> failures in core, but I'm not sure anyone ever investigated the random
> failures in AtomicObjectFactoryTest.

There are high-priority modules (core) and low-priority ones (atomic). 
If a test is randomly failing in a low-priority module, it should be 
disabled and a Jira created to track its resolution at a later date.

> Breaking your work into small chunks is clearly more work, and a small
> PR will sometimes take just as long to be integrated as a big one. But
> I really think the extra feedback you get by having smaller PRs is
> worth it. And if you think your PR is spending too much time in the
> queue, it's much easier to ping someone on IRC to review a 50-lines
> change than a 5000-lines one.

+1

>> - 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.
>
> I'm ok with postponing some decisions, as long as we're not forgetting
> about all the discussions and moving on to the next big thing when the

All the postponed decisions need the creation of a Jira.

Tristan

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