Re: [Caml-list] Doing compiler patch review with a dedicated mailing-list

[Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 12:14 PM, Daniel Bünzli
<daniel.buenzli@erratique.ch> wrote:
> It's not only easy to browse, it's *great* to browse: all the web-based mailing list archives I interact with are not even able to follow a thread running across two month. I really feel we're in 2014.

This is a bit too snarky for me to guess what you want.

I'm already doing a few reviews on mantis, and occasionally uses the
github in-patch-commenting interface when people send a link to a
github-hosted patch (eg. http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=6274
). I would be ready to experiment with a mailing-list or a specialized
review tool, based on what people would prefer. We have a solid github
mirror in place ( github.com/ocaml/ocaml ), people of OCamllabs have
kindly offered to host mailing-lists on several occasions, and have
experimented with, for example, gitlab in the past.

People of the list, if you have sent or reviewed patches or consider
doing so in the future, do you have a strong preference? If your
peer/friend/colleague wishes to contribute and asks you the place to
go, what will you wish we had?

(Keep in mind that we don't have a lot of patches sent around for now
(less than a dozen a month), and even less people*time to do the
reviews, so we don't necessarily need a highly tuned über-process.)

On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 12:14 PM, Daniel Bünzli
<daniel.buenzli@erratique.ch> wrote:
> Le lundi, 13 janvier 2014 à 11:27, Gabriel Scherer a écrit :
>> -- to lower the participation cost for those that are too cool to use
>> a bug tracker of the previous decade.
>
> That's a troll. What some of us are asking for is a usable bugtracker (cf. #6052). Frankly, mantis doesn't even know how to properly escape markup when you are commenting issues. Having proper ways to introduce code (and, less essential, lightweight formatting) on a bugtracker seems an essential feature to me and that's just one example, I won't even talk about having a quick look at patches that you can't even see in context but will download to your computer. If you want to use broken and inhumane software it's your problem but don't try to label those that actually prefer usable software as being attracted by cool and shiny things.
>
>> The nice thing with mailing-list is that they have easy-to-browse
>> archives,
>
> It's not only easy to browse, it's *great* to browse: all the web-based mailing list archives I interact with are not even able to follow a thread running across two month. I really feel we're in 2014.
>
>> (about Github, a Wise One
>> remarked that "yesterday the same people were commanding that we host
>> OCaml on Sourceforge; look where it is now!").
>
> Sure, if you move to that kind of (free or paid) service always factor in the costs of entering and leaving it, as it certainly won't help you forever. What's forever anyways ?
>
>> I'm not personally afraid of having several places where patches are
>> proposed
>
> I think that's a rather bad idea.
>
> Daniel
>
> P.S. Since you mentioned gitlab et al, I was recently pointed to this aswell: http://phabricator.org/ never interacted with though.