[Kde-scm-interest] Integrating Reviewboard with git branches

[Oswald Buddenhagen]

On Mon, Feb 04, 2013 at 11:51:31PM +1300, Ben Cooksley wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 6:18 AM, Thomas Koch <thomas at koch.ro> wrote:
> > I'm not involved in KDE but I'd love to see another big project realizing the
> > beauty of gerrit. I've some comments inline:
> 
> Does this include the user interface? The parts I have seen of it are
> not user friendly at all...
> 
one needs to get used to it and the ugliness and some quirks, but
generally it's very usable. how else do you think would 200+ people in
the qt project use it for their daily work?

> I suspect that Gerrit would complicate our existing process and
> introduce barriers to entry.
>
no, it wouldn't. you should rtfm finally. qt-project has an excellent
intro wiki.

> This is particularly concerning because some existing developers
> already have problems with Git itself, and I fear Gerrit would simply
> complicate this process even further.
> 
while there are a few (well, two) more steps to take into account, 
gerrit's review-only mode inherently catches most screwups before they
hit the repository, and consequently contributes to a less scary
learning experience.

> The integrity of the master Git repositories can never be called into
> question.
>
there is no higher risk of screwin up the repos than with any other git
server.

> A public facing web server is less secure and could be subject to
> compromise far easier than our existing system.
> 
i don't see how gerrit's built-in webserver should be inherently less
secure than all the other systems we have running.

> > Have you seen the eclipse integration of gerrit? You don't want to use the web
> > interface anymore once you saw it.
> > http://koch.ro/temp/gerrit_skillsmatter.mp4 (minute 12)
> 
> I doubt a majority of KDE Developers use Eclipse. Applications such as
> KDevelop and Qt Creator would be more more likely candidates.
> 
there is a somewhat rudimentary qtcreator integration. patches welcome.

> - From what I see Gerrit requires that an administrator register all
> new repositories, which is incompatible with our approach of allowing
> developers to create scratch repositories freely, as well as clones of
> mainline repositories.
> 
there is absolutely no reason why there cannot be a web frontend for the
administrative functions.

> - We would also have to configure each newly created repository
> explicitly to permit direct pushes assuming it supports that
>
that can be done in the default settings.

> (not permitting direct pushes is unacceptable).
>
yeah? why? because people would suddenly have to consider the part of
the policy which says that commits should be atomic (and thus the
history needs to be cleaned up properly for review?).

in fact, i'd strongly recommend *against* allowing direct pushes (to the
baseline branches).
for one, forced review (even self-approval) inherently raises the
quality. (and *no*, it's *not* an unbearable complication of the
workflow or even a barrier to entry.)
second, from experience i can tell you that people will often
accidentally direct-push when they mean to push for review. that's a
downside of the good integration with git ...
third, the possibility to uniformly implement automated checks as review
bots is a very powerful feature.

> - KDE will need to continue to keep Subversion alive for translators
> indefinitely at this point. Our current migration path involves using
> functionality built into Gitolite which permits one to pass-through
> Subversion requests. A migration to Gerrit would kill this path -
> requiring the maintenance of a separate system (with SSH keys,
> accounts, etc to match - which Gitolite would have looked after for
> us).
> 
i don't quite get what you mean. are gitolite permissions mapped to the
svn repository? i don't see why the same could not be based on gerrit
settings.

> - It would very likely require (potentially invasive) changes to our
> current anongit system,
>
i don't think so.

> and likely our existing Git hooks to a certain extent as well.
> 
very minor changes.

your other items are self-evident to the point that i won't waste time
on replying to that. rtfm.