Ad-hoc notes from the "pending patches" BOF at the GNU tools cauldron.

Ad-hoc notes from the "pending patches" BOF at the GNU tools cauldron.

[Hans-Peter Nilsson]

On a whim I hosted a BOF at the GNU tools cauldron yesterday,
titled "pending patches" (no compliance with RFC5434 intended).

This was originally only out of egotistic motives: BUMPing the
"Fix gcc.dg/lower-subreg-1.c failure, revisited" patch at
<http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2012-07/msg00280.html> (2
months from original) and "Ping again: [RFA:] Caveat for ARM in
gcc-4.7/changes.html: unaligned accesses, take 2" at
<http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2012-07/msg00282.html>, but I
also imagined there was a general need and opportunity to share
grief and maybe discuss patch handling a bit more off-the-record
than through the mailing-lists.

No pretense-silver-bullets were presented, but some of the ideas
that were aired seem worth pursuing.  I'm sure I don't remember
all good ideas (for one, I didn't actually take notes) and my
recollection might not match that of the consensus, so if you
were there (or if you were not) feel very free (as in software)
to follow-up.


Revive DannyB's patch tracker (deceased)?
No; (most) people actually reviewing patches didn't use it.

Automatic testing of submitted patches, with feedback?  Maybe;
might give added confidence in the patch, but not strictly a
patch-review issue.  Might be easier to implement for patches
entered in Bugzilla, where patches are more likely to have
machine-usable mark-up.

Volunteers making sure patches reach the right reviewer as
sometimes good patches aren't CCed to the right people?  This
might even be helped by a tool, somebody mentioned the Linux
scripts/get_maintainer.pl, with proper formatting of the
MAINTAINERS file (file globs to go with the domain of approval).
Also, volunteers (or more tools) to make sure that patches in
Bugzilla are also sent to the gcc-patches list.

More tools' suggestions to simplify patch handling: a tool or
archive-list function to find the archive entry for a certain
message-id.  I know this would help people writing pings.

There were also unspecified suggestions of improvements for
<http://gcc.gnu.org/contribute.html> but on revisiting that
page, I can't see anything I'd like to change ...except maybe
adding a call for volunteers for tasks not requiring paperwork,
for example patch follow-up as per above.  Oh, and instructions
on how to format ping messages to help speedy review;
specifically with the ChangeLog entry, a few lines explaining
the patch and archive URL to the original message.

More context (lines) in patches?  Not as a rule: people doing
review will look up the context anyway.  Mostly up to the patch
author to make any obviousness obvious.

Unfortunately no specific ideas on how to simplify reviewing for
approval-status reviewers, or how to get more reviewers, besides
of course that people are always welcome to comment on patches,
regardless of actual approver status.

brgds, H-P

Re: Ad-hoc notes from the "pending patches" BOF at the GNU tools cauldron.

[Dimitrios Apostolou]

Hi hp, thanks for the notes, I'm just going to highlight my point of view.

Regarding patch pinging, my take is that is should be seldom necessary, 
for example I tend to forget my small patches after sometime. So IMHO 
anyone replying anything is good, especially if he CCs the maintainer 
(Dodji-style :-). As you said, a get_maintainer script would come handy.

It's also the case that I often send RFC patches: patches with comments 
discussing a controversial idea, probably without changelog or regression 
testing. Sometimes I don't even CC anyone since I don't really expect a 
review, I only want to raise discussion.

Unfortunately such patches are 80% probable to be completely ignored. What 
do you think?

Finally, as I mentioned in the BOF it would be useful to be able to 
connect somehow the two patch management systems: bugzilla and ML. I'm not 
quite sure of the way, but here are the ideas:

* Automatically post bugzilla diffs to the ML, but then there is the 
problem of who answers where (hopefully not a problem if the automated 
mail has all subscribed to the bug CC'd).

* Have a field in the bugzilla keeping "related ML threads" URLs. What I 
do now is post a separate comment saying "discussed here" or "posted patch 
here". Not sure if good enough, but on bugs I've not seen it in cases I 
needed to.


Thanks,
Dimitris

Re: Ad-hoc notes from the "pending patches" BOF at the GNU tools cauldron.

[Dimitrios Apostolou]

On Tue, 10 Jul 2012, Dimitrios Apostolou wrote:

> * Have a field in the bugzilla keeping "related ML threads" URLs. What I do 
> now is post a separate comment saying "discussed here" or "posted patch 
> here". Not sure if good enough, but on bugs I've not seen it in cases I 
> needed to.

Replying to myself, I was just informed (thanks hp!) that there is the 
"URL" field in bugzilla, where the owner of the bug can add one relevant 
URL. I tried it and it's very useful, it would be even better if I could 
add more than one.


Thanks,
Dimitris

Re: Ad-hoc notes from the "pending patches" BOF at the GNU tools cauldron.

[Ian Lance Taylor]

On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 4:35 PM, Hans-Peter Nilsson
<hans-peter.nilsson@axis.com> wrote:
> On a whim I hosted a BOF at the GNU tools cauldron yesterday,
> titled "pending patches" (no compliance with RFC5434 intended).

Thanks for the notes.  I want to add one point.  There are a number of
useful tools that we can imagine.  However, what we don't have is a
person willing to write and support these tools.  For several years
dannyb worked in that role (he was the compiler tools tools compiler).
 But there is nobody doing that today.  This is an area where GCC
could really use some help, ideally from a developer experienced
enough to understand what is useful and be able to take steps to
create it.

Ian

Re: Ad-hoc notes from the "pending patches" BOF at the GNU tools cauldron.

[Jason Merrill]

Does anyone have experience with Patchwork?  It sounds like it works 
with a mailing list with less requirement for special markup than 
dannyb's tracker had.

Jason

Re: Ad-hoc notes from the "pending patches" BOF at the GNU tools cauldron.

[Hans-Peter Nilsson]

> From: Dimitrios Apostolou <jimis@gmx.net>
> Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2012 08:25:49 +0200

> Hi hp, thanks for the notes, I'm just going to highlight my point of view.
> 
> Regarding patch pinging, my take is that is should be seldom necessary, 
> for example I tend to forget my small patches after sometime.

Me too, so I wrote myself a reminder system. :)
A branch in a local git mirror with your pending patches will
probably help too.

> So IMHO 
> anyone replying anything is good, especially if he CCs the maintainer 
> (Dodji-style :-).

Getting the patch on the radar of the right maintainer
definitely helps. ;)

> As you said, a get_maintainer script would come handy.

Yes, I'd think all it takes is a volunteer to add markup to the
MAINTAINERS file and a copy of the Linux
scripts/get_maintainer.pl, but there might be controversy
regarding mapping of maintainer area to file; there can not be a
1-1 mapping, but probably good enough.  See Ian's post about
getting volunteer help with the suggested tools.  It might not
be a priority for the usual gcc hackers who already know the
mapping good enough.

> It's also the case that I often send RFC patches: patches with comments 
> discussing a controversial idea, probably without changelog or regression 
> testing. Sometimes I don't even CC anyone since I don't really expect a 
> review, I only want to raise discussion.
> 
> Unfortunately such patches are 80% probable to be completely ignored. What 
> do you think?

A general question.  I don't remember seeing anything I can
relate to, so I have to go with a general reply; it depends on
the level of controversy and the importance of getting the work
going in the right direction (both for patch author and people
seeing the patch).  Good legwork usually pays off at least to
the level of a review or a reply: do the testing, write the
ChangeLog entry.  When pinging, CC maintainers of that area.

brgds, H-P

get email addr from username (was: Ad-hoc notes from the "pending patches" BOF at the GNU tools cauldron.)

[Dimitrios Apostolou]

Hello,

I'm trying to write a small script that shows emails addresses for all 
committers of last year, for all files a patch touches. In the commit logs 
however all committers are referred to by username, and grepping the 
MAINTAINERS files sometimes doesn't bring up any email address (e.g. grep 
for jsm28).

Any idea how I can get email address for a username?


Thanks,
Dimitris

Re: get email addr from username (was: Ad-hoc notes from the "pending patches" BOF at the GNU tools cauldron.)

[Jonathan Wakely]

On Jul 16, 2012 5:28 PM, "Dimitrios Apostolou" wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm trying to write a small script that shows emails addresses for all committers of last year, for all files a patch touches. In the commit logs however all committers are referred to by username, and grepping the MAINTAINERS files sometimes doesn't bring up any email address (e.g. grep for jsm28).
>
> Any idea how I can get email address for a username?

Add @gcc.gnu.org to it?

Re: get email addr from username (was: Ad-hoc notes from the "pending patches" BOF at the GNU tools cauldron.)

[Richard Guenther]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 8:23 PM, Jonathan Wakely <jwakely.gcc@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jul 16, 2012 5:28 PM, "Dimitrios Apostolou" wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'm trying to write a small script that shows emails addresses for all committers of last year, for all files a patch touches. In the commit logs however all committers are referred to by username, and grepping the MAINTAINERS files sometimes doesn't bring up any email address (e.g. grep for jsm28).
>>
>> Any idea how I can get email address for a username?
>
> Add @gcc.gnu.org to it?

Note that people that patched a file are not necessary maintainers of that file.
Maintainers are listed exclusively in the MAINTAINERS file.

Richard.

Re: get email addr from username (was: Ad-hoc notes from the "pending patches" BOF at the GNU tools cauldron.)

[Dimitrios Apostolou]

On Mon, 2012-07-16 at 19:23 +0100, Jonathan Wakely wrote:
> Add @gcc.gnu.org to it?

Unfortunately this is rarely in agreement with MAINTAINERS. For now I
found it easier to just grep the Changelog file. 


Thanks, 
Dimitris

Re: get email addr from username (was: Ad-hoc notes from the "pending patches" BOF at the GNU tools cauldron.)

[Dimitrios Apostolou]

On Tue, 2012-07-17 at 11:24 +0200, Richard Guenther wrote:
> Note that people that patched a file are not necessary maintainers of that file.
> Maintainers are listed exclusively in the MAINTAINERS file.

I was just looking for a quick and easy hack for my own convenience,
based on the logic that most frequent committers are more likely to
comment :-)


Thanks, 
Dimitris

Re: Ad-hoc notes from the "pending patches" BOF at the GNU tools cauldron.

[Ryan Hill]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 462 bytes --]

On Wed, 11 Jul 2012 11:01:37 +0300 (EEST)
Dimitrios Apostolou <jimis@gmx.net> wrote:

> Replying to myself, I was just informed (thanks hp!) that there is the 
> "URL" field in bugzilla, where the owner of the bug can add one relevant 
> URL. I tried it and it's very useful, it would be even better if I could 
> add more than one.

You want "See Also" which lets you add multiple URLs.


-- 
fonts, gcc-porting
toolchain, wxwidgets
@ gentoo.org

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]