Re: Gerrit status update

[Luis Machado <luis.machado@linaro.org>]

On 11/22/19 6:58 PM, Simon Marchi wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> We had a discussion on IRC yesterday about the shortcomings of Gerrit
> for our workflow.  I'd like to share what was discussed, but also give
> a chance to those who are not on IRC to have a voice.

Thanks.

> 
> The two main problems of Gerrit, when applied to our current workflow,
> are related to patch series.  While it is possible to upload a sequence
> of changes, it is not possible to treat a sequence of changes as a
> logical patch series.  And therefore:
> 
> - It is not possible to attach a cover letter to a series.
> - The email notifications are not threaded like a series would.  It's
>    basically impossible to follow a series by email, as each patch will
>    have its own little thread.
> 
I went through yours and Tom's e-mail, but also found glibc's take on it 
(https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2019-11/msg00774.html).

Carlos pointed out a possible way to have a cover letter, and apparently 
that is more or less the recommended way of doing it.

It seems to me the biggest issue is having gerrit translated properly to 
e-mail format, both in terms of interaction and organization of replies 
(threaded series etc).

On the positive side i think gerrit provides quite a few useful features 
to speed up the process of submission and reviewing of patches, which 
people have already pointed out. So i won't list those here.

Considering the drawbacks of gerrit seem to be mostly concentrated 
around series of patches, maybe bigger series in particular, should we 
try and do those through e-mail instead. Maybe as a recommendation?

For other smaller contributions, gerrit still seems to be fairly useful.

As for patchwork, my experience using it in the past wasn't that great. 
It may have improved since then, but i remember it simply being 
forgotten over time, and patches piling up anyway.