[cdwg] pending review list

[Vitaly Fertman]

Hi Chris,

Here are some comments on your email. Although it is really important that
developers monitor their own tickets perhaps there are some simple ways to
make this easier. Have a read and we can discuss on Wednesday.

> I think that such a notification would probably be more annoying than useful.  If I want to know the state of my patches, I can pull up gerrit at any time and learn their current status.  I also get notification email any time my patches are reviewed, someone comments on the patch, someone comments in jira, etc.  In my opinion there are plenty of existing notifications, and I personally don't really want any additional notifications unless they provide new information.

1. no useless notifications.

I agree it is useless to send out an automatically generated list of tickets,
which may have some garbage or already discussed tickets. however, we
want to minimize a time of getting such a list of tickets in hand.

automatization will give us a "full" list of ticket
- to be looked at by Intel to see if there is anything new to take care of;
- to be looked at by Xyratex to see if the progress is adequate;
after such digesting, both parts can do their own work and identify the
problem tickets which in their turn are ready to be sent to a common list
and discussed at CDWG.

> Further, how could we possibly pick a number that makes sense?  Patches sitting in the review stage may do so for a whole host of reasons, many that are perfectly reasonable.  For instance, a new feature that is submitted after feature freeze is fairly likely to sit unreviewed until master opens again for feature landings.  Patch submissions also need to be triaged and prioritized, and sometimes less important patches will need to wait until higher priority patches have been addressed.

2. prioritization.

I agree the prioritization is needed, and this is what is currently missed,
it is absolutely not clear why some our patches are inspected quickly,
some are hanging for months.

We want a process which would include prioritization step - once done, we can
disagree with the priority and quickly rase it on CDWG meeting, or we would
know the inspection will not be done soon and will not waste CDWG time on it.

Once such priority is set, it also could be used for further automatization
so that the final pending list would be more correct.

> Please don't ask me to monitor all patches in gerrit from all organizations.  I simply don't have the time to do that, regardless of how good the tools are.  I need the individual software developers to make a reasonable attempt to first resolve the delays amongst themselves through normal conversation, be it in jira or in gerrit. Then, if in their reasoned judgment a patch's priority needs to be raised and worked on sooner, they can bring the patch to the attention of the CDWG and myself.

3. process

individual developers will not do it so regularly as you want. people may react
on some event (email, etc), they are mostly concentrated on their current task,
it is easy to forget to check the state of some patches, moreover do it regularly.
they neither attend CDWG regularly.

a company representative attends, and it would be good to minimize a time for him
of making a list of pending tickets, checking their states regularly before meetings.

the proper way is to create a proper process so that each ticket could be viewed
at any time in a common list of patches waiting for review, and its position in its
list would be clear to everyone (depending on priority/other labels). such a basis
will let developers from different companies to resolves issues "amongst themselves
through normal conversation" as you want. imho, CDWG should take care about such
a process, the more productive it will be, less interrupts for CDWG people.

process is supposed to cover the following steps:
a. once patch is submitted, it should be prioritized (by Intel?), other needed labels
are also set.
b. some auto-tool makes a list of tickets (no test/review failures) sorted by
priority/delay time/etc.
c. list is looked through by Intel and Submitter Companies, problem places
are identified by both parties:
- wrong priority;
- large delay not matching the set priority;
- re-priritization is needed;
- etc;
d. company representatives rase problem tickets on CDWG;

not a final process of course and any suggestions to improve it are welcome.

--
Vitaly