a suggestion about patch "ping"-s

[Doug Evans]

Joel Brobecker writes:
  > Hello,
  >
  > First of all, please continue to ping the GDB maintainers when
  > patches go unreviewed. We try to do our best, but as a volunteer-based
  > project, lots of patches unfortunately wait a bit before review.
  > As a reminder, the generally accepted ping frequency is 2 weeks after
  > first submission, and every week thereafter. Some have even accepted
  > the first ping after a week.
  >
  > The real suggestion I would like to make, when sending a ping, is
  > that people reply to the original email, with the patch being quoted
  > in the reply, rather than sending a completely separate email
  > with URLs to the patches. The latter may sound like a good idea,
  > since it allows to send a nice and compact email. But what it
  > does is also make the ping itself a new email thread, unrelated to
  > the emailing submitting the patch. As a result, there are two email
  > threads where a review can happen.
  >
  > For instance, one maintainer could see the ping first, and therefore
  > send a review by finding and then replying to the original thread.
  > But then, a second reviewer might not notice the review, and therefore
  > review again.
  >
  > Another example happened to me, today. I try to keep gdb-patches
  > emails in a mailbox until I either review them, or see someone else
  > do the review. Then comes a new email, un-connected to the original
  > email, with URLs of 3 patches. I had to do a little bit of research
  > to figure out whether they had already been reviewed or not.
  >
  > IMO, just replying to the original email with "PING" clearly shown
  > in the subject's reply will help us save a bit of time, and we can
  > then in turn invest that time is reviewing more submissions.
  >
  > Thank you!
  > --
  > Joel

+1