On "gardening" code reviews

[AnnoyingRains]

To clarify, this is the MR process:
If it has been a month since the last activity, a reminder is sent and the
stale label is added
If another two months passes, then the MR is finally closed.

While I agree that MRs awaiting review shouldn’t be closed, if it has been
more than three months, including two months after a ping message that
sends everyone involved an email and temporarily increased visibility in
the MR list due to activity, I don’t think it will ever be reviewed; and if
it is going to be reviewed, that can still happen.

> Why do you need a label, the stale MRs are all nicely collected at
https://invent.kde.org/teams/gardening/gitlab/-/issues
Sure, there is a list of stale MRs there, but most people don’t know it
exists and it is difficult to sort it per project or team. For example, I
cannot search for all stale Dolphin bugs as a dolphin developer. It also
makes it much more hidden from the native gitlab list of MRs. I am also
hoping that seeing a big red “Gardening: Stale” label on an MR in the MR
list should turn a few heads and cause it to gain some interest from
developers.

> It's not that they don't have visibility
Correct, but I am trying to not lower the visibility too much when doing
this, as MRs can always be reopened!

- Kye Potter, KDE Gardening
On Sat, 18 Feb 2023 at 6:45 am, Albert Astals Cid <aacid at kde.org> wrote:

> El dijous, 16 de febrer de 2023, a les 21:55:41 (CET), AnnoyingRains va
> escriure:
> > Hey Luigi,
> >
> > Thanks for the feedback! The stale MR closing has been a thing for a
> while,
>
> There's 2 different of stale MR:
>
> 1) Some KDE reviewer has asked for something to be improved in the MR and
> the
> author of the MR did not follow up
>
> 2) No one has reviewed the MR
>
> 1 is possibly fine to close (after some prudential heads up time), the
> author
> lost interest, that's life.
>
> 2 SHOULD NEVER EVER BE CLOSED. If you are doing that STOP NOW.
>
> > just not particularly active, as I was waiting for my developer account
> > application to be approved so I could properly label MRs (which does help
> > with visibility!)
>
> Why do you need a label, the stale MRs are all nicely collected at
> https://invent.kde.org/teams/gardening/gitlab/-/issues
>
> It's not that they don't have visibility, it's that we lack reviewer power/
> time.
>
> Cheers,
>   Albert
> >
> > While I know this isn’t really a solution, the gardening team also has
> > “Love Projects”, which, at least historically, helps to renew interest
> in a
> > project. Possibly a Love Project could be opened for one of these
> projects
> > with many stale MRs, specifically mentioning them and the label that is
> > applied with them.
> >
> > I know you said that you would prefer if this is opt in, but this service
> > is still opt out, like most KDE Gardening activities.
> >
> > Either way, I do agree with your point, and will see if I can come up
> with
> > a solution.
> >
> > Thanks
> > - Kye Potter, KDE Gardening
> >
> > On Fri, 17 Feb 2023 at 2:52 am, Luigi Toscano <luigi.toscano at tiscali.it>
> >
> > wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I see the the gardening started also on stale reviews.
> > > I think it should be opt-in, only for projects which request it.
> > > If that's the case already, please skip the rest (or read it anyway, it
> > > may be
> > > relevant if the policy changed).
> > >
> > > We have projects which are, let's say, sleepy, were reviews are not
> taken
> > > into
> > > account. You may say that, if some project is stale, it should go along
> > > its
> > > fate and be archive.
> > > I don't fully agree with that. As the KDE developer status allows
> access
> > > to
> > > each and every repository, a project may get some renewed interest at
> some
> > > point, and we have had several examples of this in the past.
> > >
> > > Now, I believe that automatically closing code contributions (which are
> > > slightly different beasts than bugs) can accelarate the process of
> making
> > > a
> > > project look obsolete, rather than helping them to be back. Having the
> > > reviews
> > > around may be a way for new contributors as start with a certain
> projects
> > > (by
> > > rechecking them and merging). It's true that the reviews are still
> there,
> > > just
> > > closed, but it's not the same in terms of visibility.
> > >
> > > Ciao
> > > --
> > > Luigi
>
>
>
>
>
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