Changes to our Git infrastructure

[Thomas Lübking]

On Montag, 5. Januar 2015 23:53:02 CEST, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> I'm just trying to make clear that reviewboard is a crappy tool 
> inciting people to write crappy reviews that drive people away. 

And I was trying to make clear that those "crappy reviews" are just the house cleaning stuff that should ideally go along w/ the functional reviews.
That you believe it's the only kind of review you get implies that you would simply not have gotten any other review otherwise. Not ideal, but rather unrelated.

> Apart from any other nonsense about cultural differences (the 
> standard cop-out from Dutchmen and Germans -- I ain't rude, I'm 
> just honest, it's cultural!)

Sorry, I was just trying to understand what could get anyone scared about a very simple and direct "please fix this, this and that" list - it would have to be fixed anyway at some point.

I'm sorry if you or anyone feels offended by the way it's presented, but to change that, one would first need to have a remote idea, what's so driving away about it. And sorry again, but I really cannot even imagine - wheter you may call that rude or dumb.



Ian and the DrKonqui bug:
---------------------------
> I think that people should read Ian's mail, with attention:
I have read Ian's mail and I do recall his review requests on DrKonqi.

I agree that the process was anything but fluid - though ultimately successful.

Apparently nobody actually felt in charge of DrKonqi then (and now, since Ian will apparently be sadly lost, again), so other developers, unfamiliar w/ DrKonqi commented on the patches - the first two of them actually focussing on OSX specific (or rather triggered) issues.


The last one addressed DrKonqi being broken due to bugzilla changes.

It was presented first on 30/9/2014, saw an immediate coding style and function design review, resolved 3/10/2014.
Followed up by a minor nitpick to not use fprintf, but kdebug and a call for someone w/ experience on the codebase to review on 5/10/2014

On 6/10/2014 Ian worried that he's perhaps "the person most familiar with the codebase of Dr Konqi, having worked on it for a few months now" and sugested to push the patch within the next 24h.

This raised immediate concerns from the release team about the size of the patch, discouraging to submit it to 4.14 what caused a hyperactive 7/10/2014 with the discussion leading to the consensus that a vastly simplified version of the patch would still be the best option for 4.14 (and suggestions on how to simplify things) with the result being finally presented 9/10/2014 and submitted and submitted "in time" 23h later.

I would fully agree that 7/10/2014 should have been 30/9/2014, but the most important thing is:

   IT TOOK A VETO FROM THE RELEASE TEAM 
            and thus
   THE THREAT OF A BROKEN DR KONQI FOR KDE SC4

to cause major interest in the patch, what is, given the DrKonqi bug was reported long before, a clear sign that nobody actually had a special interest.
In the end, blind ppl. were supposed to guide the one-eyed.

     AND NO TOOL ON EARTH WILL EVER FIX SUCH A SITUATION.

Tools are as good or bad as the ppl. that use them. The problem is *not* that RB encourages nitpicks, but the problem is that there's completely unmaintained code where nobody feels qualified to sign off patches.

Ian is certainly the one person permitted to retire whenever he feels like, but /actually/, now that the worst time is passed, he would be the one to fix *this* problem for DrKonqi, ie. become the person to sign off patches.

Cheers,
Thomas