There are a lot of patches lately with a lot of reviewers on them,
especially related to porting since a lot of people might need to be
in the loop for some changes.
The problem is that there's no clear responsibility given in these
reviews. If I'm the sole reviewer on a change, I know I have to do a
good job. When there are three other people, I sometimes assume that
somebody else must have looked carefully at some part of the review.
I'm sure sometimes all the reviewers think this and the change isn't
reviewed properly.
In other cases, some reviewers say LGTM for a patch, while others are
still expecting changes. The author can get confused as to the status
of the review, and I also know some patches have been checked in
lately where at least one reviewer expected further changes before
checkin.
At the same time, we want to encourage many people to participate in
the review process and keep tabs on what's going on. I propose several
changes to best practices:
1. When a patch author requests more than one reviewer, they should
make clear in the review request email what they expect the
responsibility of each reviewer to be. Example:
agl: bitmap changes
evanm: process hacks
everybody else: FYI
In this case, I might be on the review list because I've asked to be
in the loop for multiprocess changes, but I wouldn't be the primary
reviewer and the author and other reviewers wouldn't be expecting me
to review all the diffs in detail.
2. If you get a review that includes many other people, and the author
didn't do (1), please ask them what part you're responsible for if you
don't want to review the whole thing in detail.
3. The author should wait for approval from everybody on the reviewer
list before checking in.
4. People who are on a review without clear review responsibility
should be super responsive and not hold up the review. The patch
author should feel free to ping them mercilessly if they are.
5. If you're on "FYI" person on a review and you didn't actually
review in detail (or at all), but don't have a problem with the patch,
note this. You could say something like "rubber stamp" or "ACK"
instead of "LGTM." This way the real reviewers know not to trust that
you did their work for them, but the author of the patch knows they
don't have to wait for further feedback from you.
Hopefully we can still keep everybody in the loop but have clear
ownership and detailed reviews. It might even speed up some patches
since I can quickly ACK patches I don't care about, and the patch
author knows they don't have to wait for feedback from me. Or do you
think this has too much overhead?
Comments?
Brett
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