Hi, Sometimes there are changes to qtbase that the author and/or reviewers strongly suspect will break one or more modules on top of it (e.g. in qt5.git). For example, source-incompatible changes (removing QEventLoop::DeferredDeletion), or changes to the meta-type/QObject internals (which qtdeclarative is relying heavily on).
When such a change goes into qtbase, you only get the failure for the dependent modules the next time you stage something (anything) in that other module; suddenly the module no longer builds, or tests seemingly unrelated to the developer's own change start failing. This means developers will be scratching their heads and spending time tracking down what was the actual cause of the failure (first in their own changes/module, then in the dependencies). It also means that the CI is wasting cycles on subsequent (failed) attempts to fix the failure, which is disruptive to everyone trying to stage new and unrelated changes. If there is no quick fix, the last resort is to "pin" one or more of the dependencies' to a particular SHA1 (e.g. from the qt5.git submodule) in the sync.profile until the issue has been resolved, then "unpin" it again later. An idea to avoid such disruption would be a CI where you can try to merge your change, and it will build all of qt5.git with it (_and_ run all the module's tests). This could be a separate button in Gerrit, for example. You then get a report in Gerrit with the status from the complete build & tests run. Even if everything succeeds, the change will not actually be integrated; this would just be a tool for getting an indication of potential inter-module problems with your patch. If there are problems, the developer can then either fix the affected modules in advance if possible, or at least give a heads-up and/or prepare patches that will fix the upcoming breakage in the other modules. What do you think? Best regards, Kent _______________________________________________ Development mailing list Development@qt-project.org http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/development
