FYI: Status of gdb usage of gerrit

[Carlos O'Donell]

On 11/27/19 10:37 PM, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
> On 28/11/19 2:26 am, Florian Weimer wrote:
>> The patchwork client itself does not seem to have been packaged in
>> Debian, though.
> 
> A compatible client needs to be downloaded from the instance.  e.g. for
> kernel.org it is:
> 
> https://patchwork.kernel.org/pwclient
> 
> There's also the question of plugging in CI, but I suppose we could add
> triggers and have buildbot, jenkins, etc. run things based off those
> triggers and send an email.

Please leave that aside for now.

> But it's going to be a fair amount of configuration.  Question is, do we
> have the resources to do this maintenance and enhancement?  Maybe we can
> use the GNU funds to contract someone to set it up and keep this running.

That is something we can pursue independently of finding a system that
helps us with patch review and patch tracking.

> It seems like the major hurdle is our need to hack in the email workflow
> into everything that we try.  I wonder if it's really worth the effort
> and if we want to just switch over once and for all so that emails
> become only a source of notifications.

We need to take into account the needs and workflows of our most experienced
reviewers and contributors, and those developers have a preference for email.

We should review the process in the abstract against our requirements.

I don't dislike email-based reviews, what I really want from my reviews is:

* A list of things to review (patch tracking/comment tracking)
  - Critically important for me when I set aside time I need to jump right in.
  - Nothing provided by email.

* A way to do side-by-side diffs and version-to-version diffs (diffuse + git range-diff)
  - git difftool --tool=diffuse/kompare/meld
  - git range-diff
  - Needs automation to pull down the patches and create branches/commits.

* A way to hook in CI/CD
  - Need a way to know if the patch still applies (scripts will help)
  - Need a way to know basic x86_64 still works.

I was hoping gerrit's email integration for feedback from the ML
would work better than it does. Right now that's a showstopper for
immediate use in that we want *one* system of record that works well
with email responses.

-- 
Cheers,
Carlos.