Re: increasing the number of GCC reviewers

[Basile STARYNKEVITCH <basile@starynkevitch.net>]

FWIW, I am not taking this question personally (I don't really claim 
that I could become any kind of reviewer; I believe in general that 
reviewing abilities should be evaluated by others.). I just think the 
set of reviewers should significantly grow.


Andrew Haley wrote:
>
>   
>> My feeling is on the contrary that the set of people having a real
>> knowledge of gcc (or at least of substantial parts of it [*]) is much
>> bigger than the set of reviewers allowed to say OK.
>>     
>
>   
I am not at the summit. So I don't know if my perception "there are not 
enough reviewers" [0] is shared by others or not. I suppose it is agreed 
(that the set of reviewers should be increased [1])  If not, ignore the 
rest. I really don't know if other people believe (as I do) that the set 
of reviewers should significantly increase.

My perception is that many reviewers have too much reviews [2] in their 
queue, and that these tasks might overwhelm or bore them. But since I am 
not a reviewer, I cannot reliably understand what it is to be one. For 
instance, my feeling is that Diego Novillo -whom I know, and I admire a 
lot- (and some other GCC gurus) is almost exhausted by his pending 
review queue.

> That's certainly true, but there's a big difference between having real
> knowledge of gcc and having enough real knowledge to approve a patch.
>   
What might perhaps be discussed at the summit is possibly this (perhaps 
too strong) requirement on the reviewer's level. If there are too few 
reviewers, and if making a big lot of reviews is boring (or just too 
demanding or too tiring) to them, then we might consider lowering the 
threshold to become a reviewer (e.g. dispatch review abilities to more 
people, or perhaps define some fine grain policy on future reviewers; I 
could imagine that some people could review just a few GCC source files).
> It is quite possibly the case that some maintainers should be "promoted".
> But it isn't sufficient to have a blanket policy of "let's have more
> reviewers".  
But we first should agree on the wish than an increase of the set of 
reviewers is desirable.

> We need something more like "I think Fred Bloggs knows gcc
> well enough to approve patches to reload" or "I am Fred Bloggs and I
> know gcc well enough to approve patches to reload."
>   

I am not sure to parse correctly this sentence. Sorry, English is a 
foreign language to me. Is "reload" some functionality (PCH?) you refer 
inside GCC, or is it the task of making reviews on patches submitted on 
gcc-patches@ ? I was just thinking about stuff like "Fred Bloggs knows 
enough to approve patches submitted on gcc-patches@ to files gcc/ggc*.[ch]"


And it could happen that the plugin infrastructure might in the future 
move some code out of GCC core (and into plugins). In that future 
situation, the set of reviewers might not need to increase.

Regards.

Note 0: for me a reviewer is any person admitted to say ok to some (even 
very few) patches.

Note 1: My intuition is that the number of reviewers should be 
proportional (at least; and one could believe to O(n log n) where n is 
the size of GCC) to the GCC source size. I am not sure (& I don't know 
if) it has increased by 30% in 3 years, as did the source code!

Note 2: I have no idea if the patch-to-be-reviewed queue of each 
reviewer has increased since 2 years ago! I intuitively feel it did 
increase a lot, i.e. reviewers have much more pressure on them. Maybe I 
am wrong!

-- 
Basile STARYNKEVITCH         http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/
email: basile<at>starynkevitch<dot>net mobile: +33 6 8501 2359
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