On 11/23/12 11:29, Dave Townsend wrote:
On 11/06/12 10:09, Dave Townsend wrote:
We've had a policy requiring super-review for certain kinds of patches
for a long time. It's changed a couple of times but the current policy
(http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/reviewers.html) primarily requires
super-review for any patch that introduces or changes an API. Basically
any function in a JS file or JSM is covered here, or at least that is my
reading of it. The reasoning is pretty straightforward, designing APIs
well up front reduces the maintenance burden in the future and hopefully
means we don't have to make changes that break add-ons.
The problem is that I frequently come across patches that were landed
without super-review despite meeting the requirements. This suggests
that many reviewers aren't aware of the policy or don't have the same
interpretation of it as I do. We probably need to do a better job of
making sure that all reviewers in particular understand the policy and
are following it.
But, I haven't yet seen an issue arise from this lack of SR. Does that
mean that the policy is too restrictive and we need to change it to more
closely match how reviewers are working?
Either we're setting ourselves up for big problems down the road or we
have a policy that is in some cases hindering development. Those are the
extremes of course and the reality is probably somewhere in between, but
I'd like to hear other people's thoughts about this.
I've made a blog post suggesting a change to the definition of what an
API is that requires super-review. I'd appreciate it if people read it
and gave me some feedback:
http://www.oxymoronical.com/blog/2012/11/What-is-an-API
It's a bit difficult to draw a consensus from everyone here but mostly
it seems that people think the status quo with module owners and
reviewers making their judgement is working out here. I'm going to email
all the module owners directly and ask that they look over the policy
and communicate with their peers about what their expectations are.
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