Feature matrix for future infrastructure

[Jan Kundrát]

On Friday, 23 January 2015 15:21:34 CEST, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> There is no way an artist who has a nice patch for Krita is 
> ever going to be able to inducted into becoming a Krita 
> developer if they have to follow
> instructions like this:
>
> https://techbase.kde.org/Development/Gerrit

Hi Boudewijn,
that page contains instructions for existing KDE developers on how to work 
with KDE's Gerrit effectively. You are right that an artist who has zero 
experience with Git and is writing their first C++ patch is likely going to 
have trouble with following a developer-level documentation. A better 
introductionary documentation is surely needed, and it will be needed 
regardless of what platform we choose.

The people with the lowest level of developer experience that I've been in 
touch within KDE are probably some of the GCI students. I think it is 
reasonable to assume that they still know a bit more than your artist which 
is about to send a patch to Krita. This might explain why these students 
were able to contribute via Gerrit without much trouble, and why I 
initially questioned your analysis.

> And, apart from detail-by-detail comparisons, gerrit would be an exceedingly 
> bad choice for a community like KDE, with its enormous diversity of skill 
> levels. Gerrit is uninviting and complicated.

Ah, this might be the core of these differing opinions. Do I understand you 
right? In your mind, KDE should offer tools which make it extremely easy 
for inexperienced users to get involved, even if it makes the job of 
maintainers and/or senior developers a bit more complicated, is that right? 
In my mind, KDE should care primarily about people who are doing the work 
now, while providing enough ropes for motivated newcomers to be able to 
participate if they are willing to follow instructions and learn new stuff.

Now, both of these approaches certainly have merits. Without ingesting new 
blood, a project will eventually die. Without caring about experienced 
developers' comfort, maintainers will drift away and the death will come, 
too.

Maybe the tools suitable for these two approaches are not necessarily the 
same, then.

> Gerrit is just a kind of reviewboard with a git integration, phabricator 
> is a whole integrated development platform. 

Agreed, which is why the comparison should be about Phabricator + 
whatever_else_is_needed on one hand, and Gerrit + 
whatever_is_needed_for_that on the other hand. Comparing individual pieces 
without seeing the whole mosaic doesn't make much sense.

With kind regards,
Jan

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