Subject: Re: [TOPIC 10/11] Project Tracking

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2024 12:41:34 -0700

Taylor Blau <[email-masked]> writes:

> * Peff: In our project, the formalism of voting is “is it merged to
>   ‘master’ in Junio’s tree”.

Graduation from 'next' to 'master' is mostly mechanical "spend 1
calendar week and you are done", so 'next' matters a lot more.

> * Emily: I want to have the process of getting from discussion to merge
>   be less fuzzy.
> * Peff: So in brian’s example, let’s take SHA-256. The process by which
>   the maintainer decides that is inherently fuzzy.
> * Emily: Sure, but I would like to be obvious to someone besides the
>   maintainer.

FWIW, this also is fuzzy for the maintainer, especially when not
many people who ought to know a lot more than the maintainer are
staying silent.

> * Jonathan: (to Peff) you mentioned sometimes you have a mild negative
>   feeling about something and you’re good about expressing it on-list,
>   but for a lot of contributors that will cause some discomfort and it
>   will cause them to stay away from that thread. If we’re a little more
>   clear about what’s expected, then conversations can get stalled less
>   often - e.g. when a thread needs a comment from a refs expert, getting
>   that comment that supports forward progress.

Yes, either forward or backward.  Having to keep a series that looks
potentially worth doing for weeks on 'seen' without getting any
movement is *VERY* painful.  Would it motivate more experienced
contributors to review and express either support or refusal if I
more frequently, say after 20 days since its latest round got queued
on 'seen', a topic that does not seem to get enough support to be
merged to 'next' and is not getting rerolled?

> * brian: I just gave Taylor feedback on the SHA-1 series that he wrote,
>   saying that I didn’t love it. But others felt OK about it, so we moved
>   forward.

For this particular one, I consider it is not "we moved forward", by
the way.  Please do not consider anything that is not marked with
"Will merge to 'next'?" (with or without the final '?') moving
forward.

> * Peff: it’s important to leave at the end of your review the way you
>   feel about something instead of just having a few comments.

Yup, that would clarify area experts' position on topics and would
help everybody a lot.  It would also help me when updating the
"What's cooking" draft, which is how the topics currently in-flight
are getting tracked.

Thanks.