On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 11:50 PM, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote:
I'm still trying to understand the nature of this
problem. I think that's
what's bothering me the most at the moment. It's frustrating that I still
can't quite figure out exactly what the issue is [with code deployment being
so slow] and why it isn't being resolved (even if I don't hold out much hope
for an actual resolution being implemented). To me, the solution seems a lot
more obvious than it does to others, a point that I'm still struggling with
in my head.
As far as I can tell, the people in charge have just prioritized other
projects over reviewing volunteers' code. Presumably that's because
they think those projects are more important than reviewing
volunteers' code. It seems pretty straightforward to me.
On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 12:10 AM, Brandon Harris <bharris(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Your solution, as you've described it in
the past, comprises "people do
code review or orf wit' dere heads".
I know of no professional developer who has dignity who will work under
those conditions. So it's untenable.
I propose we stop focusing on the "do this or you're fired" style
thinking and instead move towards more constructive process.
Um, how is "please spend today reducing the code review backlog" any
different from "please spend today working on further issues in
ArticleFeedback" or whatever? Developers are assigned to particular
tasks by managers. You can't just assign them to any old task as
though they're automatons, but I don't see what exactly is so
untenable about assigning people to do code review. Wikimedia did it
for 1.17. Tons of other organizations that produce open-source
projects assign their employees to spend part of their time reviewing
code: Mozilla, Google (for things like Chromium and WebKit), Apple
(WebKit), etc., etc.
So I really don't get what you're saying here. Superficially, you
seem to be saying that managers cannot assign developers to do
specific things at all, but you can't possibly mean that. Do you feel
there's some reason it's less practical to assign people to review
code than to write it?
On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 12:35 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
In case anyone's wondering what I think of this, I
was pretty blunt
last time around:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2011-April/052893.html
To be any more blunt than that, I'd have to press the caps lock key ;)
Do you think this should be the policy for all code? Because I'm
noticing a pretty decent number of commits being deployed right now:
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/branches/wmf/1.17wmf1/?view=log
Some of them are things like "Merge ArticleFeedback to trunk state".
Do you feel that projects like ArticleFeedback should also be deployed
only once every few months? Or are they different for some reason?