[Caml-list] [ANN] Experiment: OCaml patch review on github.com/ocaml/ocaml

[Caml-list] [ANN] Experiment: OCaml patch review on github.com/ocaml/ocaml

[Gabriel Scherer]

TL;DR: During the six next months, we will follow pull requests (PR)
posted on the github mirror of the OCaml distribution, as an
alternative to the mantis bugtracker. This experiment hopes to attract
more people to participate in the extremely helpful and surprisingly
rewarding activity of patch reviews.


Dear OCaml community,

I think we need more people ready to review patches proposed for
inclusion in the OCaml compiler/distribution; lack of reviews is
currently one of the bottleneck in the development process -- among
others, such as the sheer difficulty to reach consensus on any change
to the language itself. Doing patch reviews is helpful, extremely
interesting, and an excellent way to get to know more about small
parts of the compiler.

There was a resurgence of discussions on caml-list (Yotam Barnoy's
[moving to github] and Adrien Nader's thoughtful proposal of
a [mailing-list for patch review]). Amir Chaudhry launched a poll to
record decreasing order of preference, and the [results] are
clear-cut: people hate Mantis' guts, and would rather use anything
else.

[moving to github]: http://alan.petitepomme.net/cwn/2013.12.24.html#5
[mailing-list for patch review]:
https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2014-01/msg00055.html
[results]: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QWhqJRv1yPvdi6E3AiqbvUwlqGorV_Wbk7h_JYuDUiQ/viewanalytics

I declare open the following experiment: for six months, starting
today upto late July, patches proposed for the OCaml distribution may
be submitted as a pull request (PR) on the [main github mirror], and
we warmly encourage anyone to review the proposed patches, and make
any comments they feel can help. Anything that can help improve the
contribution, or discuss potential issues (backward compatibility,
future-proofiness of the change, alternative designs...) will speed up
the time between a patch proposal and a clear decision to integrate it
or not.

[main github mirror]: https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/

In six months, we will reconsider, the default choice being to stop
using github and revert to a mantis-only workflow. In the meantime,
I will mirror the github PRs on the mantis side, so that contributors
that do not wish to use the github interface can continue working as
before. Patches and reviews are of course still welcome on mantis.

Note that github will *not* be used for issue tracking, only for patch
reviews. If you want to submit a patch against a bug discussed in
Mantis, or want to re-submit a patch already in Mantis (in the wild
hope of more eyeballs), feel free to send a github PR and link to it
from the bugtracker. Finally, the github mirror remains *read-only*:
if patches are accepted, the PR will be closed but will be committed
to the SVN first, and synced in git as usual.

We're just trying things to see if it works better. I hope it does. In
any case, thanks in advance for your participation -- whichever tool
you use. Happy hacking!

.

PS: If you want to get notified for all Pull Requests sent, you
(need a github account and) can click on the "Watch" button in the top
right of http://github.com/ocaml/ocaml to register for
notifications. In the [notification settings] page of your account,
you can set up notifications to get send by email and/or to the
(mostly useless) github notification web interface.

[notification settings](https://github.com/settings/notifications)

Re: [Caml-list] [ANN] Experiment: OCaml patch review on github.com/ocaml/ocaml

[Anil Madhavapeddy]

As a followup to this, I've written a script that syncs all the
open pull requests against the compiler as OPAM compiler switches.
This is now running live on the central OPAM respository.

For instance, if you now `opam update` and look at your switches:

$ opam switch --all
--     -- 4.02.0dev+pr10              Add String.{split,rsplit}
--     -- 4.02.0dev+pr13              Add String.{cut,rcut}.
--     -- 4.02.0dev+pr14              Add absolute directory names to bytecode format for ocamldebug to use
--     -- 4.02.0dev+pr15              replace String.blit by String.unsafe_blit
--     -- 4.02.0dev+pr17              Cmm arithmetic optimisations
--     -- 4.02.0dev+pr18              Patch for issue 5584
--     -- 4.02.0dev+pr2               Parse -.x**2. (unary -.) as -.(x**2.).  Fix PR#3414
--     -- 4.02.0dev+pr20              OCamlbuild: Fix the check of ocamlfind
--     -- 4.02.0dev+pr3               Extend record punning to allow destructuring.
--     -- 4.02.0dev+pr4               Fix for PR#4832 (Filling bigarrays may block out runtime)
--     -- 4.02.0dev+pr6               Warn user when a type variable in a type constraint has been instantiated.
--     -- 4.02.0dev+pr7               Extend ocamllex with actions before refilling
--     -- 4.02.0dev+pr8               Adds a .gitignore to ignore all generated files during `make world.opt'
--     -- 4.02.0dev+pr9               FreeBSD 10 uses clang by default, with gcc not available by default
--     -- 4.02.0dev+trunk             latest trunk snapshot

Each switch corresponds to the current development trunk, with the
diff in the PR applied.  If the patch is sane, you can proceed to
install OPAM packages in the experimental tree as usual without
affecting your day-to-day compiler switch.

Hope this is useful!  More details at:
http://anil.recoil.org/2014/03/25/ocaml-github-and-opam.html

It's set to run daily at the moment, and switches will be deleted once
the corresponding pull request is closed.

cheers,
Anil

On 30 Jan 2014, at 11:34, Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com> wrote:

> TL;DR: During the six next months, we will follow pull requests (PR)
> posted on the github mirror of the OCaml distribution, as an
> alternative to the mantis bugtracker. This experiment hopes to attract
> more people to participate in the extremely helpful and surprisingly
> rewarding activity of patch reviews.
> 
> 
> Dear OCaml community,
> 
> I think we need more people ready to review patches proposed for
> inclusion in the OCaml compiler/distribution; lack of reviews is
> currently one of the bottleneck in the development process -- among
> others, such as the sheer difficulty to reach consensus on any change
> to the language itself. Doing patch reviews is helpful, extremely
> interesting, and an excellent way to get to know more about small
> parts of the compiler.
> 
> There was a resurgence of discussions on caml-list (Yotam Barnoy's
> [moving to github] and Adrien Nader's thoughtful proposal of
> a [mailing-list for patch review]). Amir Chaudhry launched a poll to
> record decreasing order of preference, and the [results] are
> clear-cut: people hate Mantis' guts, and would rather use anything
> else.
> 
> [moving to github]: http://alan.petitepomme.net/cwn/2013.12.24.html#5
> [mailing-list for patch review]:
> https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2014-01/msg00055.html
> [results]: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QWhqJRv1yPvdi6E3AiqbvUwlqGorV_Wbk7h_JYuDUiQ/viewanalytics
> 
> I declare open the following experiment: for six months, starting
> today upto late July, patches proposed for the OCaml distribution may
> be submitted as a pull request (PR) on the [main github mirror], and
> we warmly encourage anyone to review the proposed patches, and make
> any comments they feel can help. Anything that can help improve the
> contribution, or discuss potential issues (backward compatibility,
> future-proofiness of the change, alternative designs...) will speed up
> the time between a patch proposal and a clear decision to integrate it
> or not.
> 
> [main github mirror]: https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/
> 
> In six months, we will reconsider, the default choice being to stop
> using github and revert to a mantis-only workflow. In the meantime,
> I will mirror the github PRs on the mantis side, so that contributors
> that do not wish to use the github interface can continue working as
> before. Patches and reviews are of course still welcome on mantis.
> 
> Note that github will *not* be used for issue tracking, only for patch
> reviews. If you want to submit a patch against a bug discussed in
> Mantis, or want to re-submit a patch already in Mantis (in the wild
> hope of more eyeballs), feel free to send a github PR and link to it
> from the bugtracker. Finally, the github mirror remains *read-only*:
> if patches are accepted, the PR will be closed but will be committed
> to the SVN first, and synced in git as usual.
> 
> We're just trying things to see if it works better. I hope it does. In
> any case, thanks in advance for your participation -- whichever tool
> you use. Happy hacking!
> 
> .
> 
> PS: If you want to get notified for all Pull Requests sent, you
> (need a github account and) can click on the "Watch" button in the top
> right of http://github.com/ocaml/ocaml to register for
> notifications. In the [notification settings] page of your account,
> you can set up notifications to get send by email and/or to the
> (mostly useless) github notification web interface.
> 
> [notification settings](https://github.com/settings/notifications)
> _______________________________________________
> Platform mailing list
> Platform@lists.ocaml.org
> http://lists.ocaml.org/listinfo/platform
> 

Re: [Caml-list] [ocaml-platform] [ANN] Experiment: OCaml patch review on github.com/ocaml/ocaml

[Yotam Barnoy]

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This is incredible! Now let's get them all compiling and running unit tests
on Travis!

Yotam



On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 12:40 PM, Anil Madhavapeddy <anil@recoil.org> wrote:

> As a followup to this, I've written a script that syncs all the
> open pull requests against the compiler as OPAM compiler switches.
> This is now running live on the central OPAM respository.
>
> For instance, if you now `opam update` and look at your switches:
>
> $ opam switch --all
> --     -- 4.02.0dev+pr10              Add String.{split,rsplit}
> --     -- 4.02.0dev+pr13              Add String.{cut,rcut}.
> --     -- 4.02.0dev+pr14              Add absolute directory names to
> bytecode format for ocamldebug to use
> --     -- 4.02.0dev+pr15              replace String.blit by
> String.unsafe_blit
> --     -- 4.02.0dev+pr17              Cmm arithmetic optimisations
> --     -- 4.02.0dev+pr18              Patch for issue 5584
> --     -- 4.02.0dev+pr2               Parse -.x**2. (unary -.) as
> -.(x**2.).  Fix PR#3414
> --     -- 4.02.0dev+pr20              OCamlbuild: Fix the check of
> ocamlfind
> --     -- 4.02.0dev+pr3               Extend record punning to allow
> destructuring.
> --     -- 4.02.0dev+pr4               Fix for PR#4832 (Filling bigarrays
> may block out runtime)
> --     -- 4.02.0dev+pr6               Warn user when a type variable in a
> type constraint has been instantiated.
> --     -- 4.02.0dev+pr7               Extend ocamllex with actions before
> refilling
> --     -- 4.02.0dev+pr8               Adds a .gitignore to ignore all
> generated files during `make world.opt'
> --     -- 4.02.0dev+pr9               FreeBSD 10 uses clang by default,
> with gcc not available by default
> --     -- 4.02.0dev+trunk             latest trunk snapshot
>
> Each switch corresponds to the current development trunk, with the
> diff in the PR applied.  If the patch is sane, you can proceed to
> install OPAM packages in the experimental tree as usual without
> affecting your day-to-day compiler switch.
>
> Hope this is useful!  More details at:
> http://anil.recoil.org/2014/03/25/ocaml-github-and-opam.html
>
> It's set to run daily at the moment, and switches will be deleted once
> the corresponding pull request is closed.
>
> cheers,
> Anil
>
> On 30 Jan 2014, at 11:34, Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > TL;DR: During the six next months, we will follow pull requests (PR)
> > posted on the github mirror of the OCaml distribution, as an
> > alternative to the mantis bugtracker. This experiment hopes to attract
> > more people to participate in the extremely helpful and surprisingly
> > rewarding activity of patch reviews.
> >
> >
> > Dear OCaml community,
> >
> > I think we need more people ready to review patches proposed for
> > inclusion in the OCaml compiler/distribution; lack of reviews is
> > currently one of the bottleneck in the development process -- among
> > others, such as the sheer difficulty to reach consensus on any change
> > to the language itself. Doing patch reviews is helpful, extremely
> > interesting, and an excellent way to get to know more about small
> > parts of the compiler.
> >
> > There was a resurgence of discussions on caml-list (Yotam Barnoy's
> > [moving to github] and Adrien Nader's thoughtful proposal of
> > a [mailing-list for patch review]). Amir Chaudhry launched a poll to
> > record decreasing order of preference, and the [results] are
> > clear-cut: people hate Mantis' guts, and would rather use anything
> > else.
> >
> > [moving to github]: http://alan.petitepomme.net/cwn/2013.12.24.html#5
> > [mailing-list for patch review]:
> > https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2014-01/msg00055.html
> > [results]:
> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QWhqJRv1yPvdi6E3AiqbvUwlqGorV_Wbk7h_JYuDUiQ/viewanalytics
> >
> > I declare open the following experiment: for six months, starting
> > today upto late July, patches proposed for the OCaml distribution may
> > be submitted as a pull request (PR) on the [main github mirror], and
> > we warmly encourage anyone to review the proposed patches, and make
> > any comments they feel can help. Anything that can help improve the
> > contribution, or discuss potential issues (backward compatibility,
> > future-proofiness of the change, alternative designs...) will speed up
> > the time between a patch proposal and a clear decision to integrate it
> > or not.
> >
> > [main github mirror]: https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/
> >
> > In six months, we will reconsider, the default choice being to stop
> > using github and revert to a mantis-only workflow. In the meantime,
> > I will mirror the github PRs on the mantis side, so that contributors
> > that do not wish to use the github interface can continue working as
> > before. Patches and reviews are of course still welcome on mantis.
> >
> > Note that github will *not* be used for issue tracking, only for patch
> > reviews. If you want to submit a patch against a bug discussed in
> > Mantis, or want to re-submit a patch already in Mantis (in the wild
> > hope of more eyeballs), feel free to send a github PR and link to it
> > from the bugtracker. Finally, the github mirror remains *read-only*:
> > if patches are accepted, the PR will be closed but will be committed
> > to the SVN first, and synced in git as usual.
> >
> > We're just trying things to see if it works better. I hope it does. In
> > any case, thanks in advance for your participation -- whichever tool
> > you use. Happy hacking!
> >
> > .
> >
> > PS: If you want to get notified for all Pull Requests sent, you
> > (need a github account and) can click on the "Watch" button in the top
> > right of http://github.com/ocaml/ocaml to register for
> > notifications. In the [notification settings] page of your account,
> > you can set up notifications to get send by email and/or to the
> > (mostly useless) github notification web interface.
> >
> > [notification settings](https://github.com/settings/notifications)
> > _______________________________________________
> > Platform mailing list
> > Platform@lists.ocaml.org
> > http://lists.ocaml.org/listinfo/platform
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Platform mailing list
> Platform@lists.ocaml.org
> http://lists.ocaml.org/listinfo/platform
>

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Re: [Caml-list] [ocaml-platform] [ANN] Experiment: OCaml patch review on github.com/ocaml/ocaml

[François Bobot]

On 25/03/2014 22:34, Yotam Barnoy wrote:
> This is incredible! Now let's get them all compiling and running unit tests on Travis!
> On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 12:40 PM, Anil Madhavapeddy <anil@recoil.org <mailto:anil@recoil.org>> wrote:
>     Each switch corresponds to the current development trunk, with the
>     diff in the PR applied.  If the patch is sane, you can proceed to
>     install OPAM packages in the experimental tree as usual without
>     affecting your day-to-day compiler switch.
> 
>     Hope this is useful!  More details at:
>     http://anil.recoil.org/2014/03/25/ocaml-github-and-opam.html

It is awfully useful. I was trying to setup an OPAM repository for simplifying the review of PR#22,
but you did it for me and all the others, thank you.

 I'm just wondering if it is wise to add all these switches to the default OPAM repository. For
casual ocaml user the useful switches are lost among all these PR.

  Perhaps the default possible switches can be reduced to the last releases (for people that work on
project that must support old version of ocaml) and to the beta and trunk for people that are
curious of the accepted new features.

  For ocaml compiler hackers a specific OPAM repository with all the svn branches and github PR can
be setup.

What do you think?

-- 
François
	

Re: [Caml-list] [ocaml-platform] [ANN] Experiment: OCaml patch review on github.com/ocaml/ocaml

[Louis Gesbert]

Thanks Anil !

> It is awfully useful. I was trying to setup an OPAM repository for simplifying the review of PR#22,
> but you did it for me and all the others, thank you.
> 
>  I'm just wondering if it is wise to add all these switches to the default OPAM repository. For
> casual ocaml user the useful switches are lost among all these PR.
> 
>   Perhaps the default possible switches can be reduced to the last releases (for people that work on
> project that must support old version of ocaml) and to the beta and trunk for people that are
> curious of the accepted new features.

That's why in OPAM 1.1.1 we changed `opam switch list` to only display the default compilers, and you need to add `--all` to see all existing compiler descriptions. I think it's enough to address your concern.

But that doesn't prevent a specific repo of course.

Re: [Caml-list] [ocaml-platform] [ANN] Experiment: OCaml patch review on github.com/ocaml/ocaml

[Anil Madhavapeddy]

On 26 Mar 2014, at 09:12, Louis Gesbert <louis.gesbert@ocamlpro.com> wrote:

> Thanks Anil !
> 
>> It is awfully useful. I was trying to setup an OPAM repository for simplifying the review of PR#22,
>> but you did it for me and all the others, thank you.
>> 
>> I'm just wondering if it is wise to add all these switches to the default OPAM repository. For
>> casual ocaml user the useful switches are lost among all these PR.
>> 
>>  Perhaps the default possible switches can be reduced to the last releases (for people that work on
>> project that must support old version of ocaml) and to the beta and trunk for people that are
>> curious of the accepted new features.
> 
> That's why in OPAM 1.1.1 we changed `opam switch list` to only display the default compilers, and you need to add `--all` to see all existing compiler descriptions. I think it's enough to address your concern.
> 
> But that doesn't prevent a specific repo of course.

I figured that for the course of Gabriel's experiment, we might as well keep it as simple as possible.  The only churn that casual users will see is a slightly more verbose 'opam update' as the switches come and go.

If it transpires that the full force of Mantis bugs move over to a system like this in the future, then I agree that we should maintain a separate remote instead.

-anil

Re: [Caml-list] [ocaml-platform] [ANN] Experiment: OCaml patch review on github.com/ocaml/ocaml

[Jeremy Yallop]

On 30 January 2014 11:34, Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com> wrote:
> TL;DR: During the six next months, we will follow pull requests (PR)
> posted on the github mirror of the OCaml distribution, as an
> alternative to the mantis bugtracker.

We now also have a GitHub mirror of the OCaml manual:

    https://github.com/ocaml/ocamldoc/

Could we please extend the experiment to include pull requests to the
manual as well as to the main source tree?  There have been a few pull
requests recently that will need corresponding updates to the
documentation.  It'd be useful to give source and documentation
changes the same visibility.

Re: [Caml-list] [ocaml-platform] [ANN] Experiment: OCaml patch review on github.com/ocaml/ocaml

[Jacques-Pascal Deplaix]

I'm a little skeptical for the name of this repository. I think «
ocamldoc » should be reserved to the tool.
Maybe « documentation » or « manual » would be better.

Cheers,

On 04/08/2014 02:37 PM, Jeremy Yallop wrote:
> On 30 January 2014 11:34, Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com> wrote:
>> TL;DR: During the six next months, we will follow pull requests (PR)
>> posted on the github mirror of the OCaml distribution, as an
>> alternative to the mantis bugtracker.
> We now also have a GitHub mirror of the OCaml manual:
>
>     https://github.com/ocaml/ocamldoc/
>
> Could we please extend the experiment to include pull requests to the
> manual as well as to the main source tree?  There have been a few pull
> requests recently that will need corresponding updates to the
> documentation.  It'd be useful to give source and documentation
> changes the same visibility.
>

Re: [Caml-list] [ocaml-platform] [ANN] Experiment: OCaml patch review on github.com/ocaml/ocaml

[Gabriel Scherer]

Sure, let's consider this repository is also part of the PR experiment.

Jacques-Pascal: that's a good remark, but to be fair the names comes
from the original SVN repository for the ocaml manual, itself named
"ocamldoc". I agree "ocaml-manual" would be a better name.


On Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 2:37 PM, Jeremy Yallop <yallop@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 30 January 2014 11:34, Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com> wrote:
>> TL;DR: During the six next months, we will follow pull requests (PR)
>> posted on the github mirror of the OCaml distribution, as an
>> alternative to the mantis bugtracker.
>
> We now also have a GitHub mirror of the OCaml manual:
>
>     https://github.com/ocaml/ocamldoc/
>
> Could we please extend the experiment to include pull requests to the
> manual as well as to the main source tree?  There have been a few pull
> requests recently that will need corresponding updates to the
> documentation.  It'd be useful to give source and documentation
> changes the same visibility.

Re: [Caml-list] [ocaml-platform] [ANN] Experiment: OCaml patch review on github.com/ocaml/ocaml

[Anil Madhavapeddy]

I've renamed it to ocaml-manual.  GitHub maintains a redirection, so the
scripts can continue to push to the old name.

https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml-manual

-anil

On 8 Apr 2014, at 14:35, Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com> wrote:

> Sure, let's consider this repository is also part of the PR experiment.
> 
> Jacques-Pascal: that's a good remark, but to be fair the names comes
> from the original SVN repository for the ocaml manual, itself named
> "ocamldoc". I agree "ocaml-manual" would be a better name.
> 
> 
> On Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 2:37 PM, Jeremy Yallop <yallop@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 30 January 2014 11:34, Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> TL;DR: During the six next months, we will follow pull requests (PR)
>>> posted on the github mirror of the OCaml distribution, as an
>>> alternative to the mantis bugtracker.
>> 
>> We now also have a GitHub mirror of the OCaml manual:
>> 
>>    https://github.com/ocaml/ocamldoc/
>> 
>> Could we please extend the experiment to include pull requests to the
>> manual as well as to the main source tree?  There have been a few pull
>> requests recently that will need corresponding updates to the
>> documentation.  It'd be useful to give source and documentation
>> changes the same visibility.
> _______________________________________________
> Platform mailing list
> Platform@lists.ocaml.org
> http://lists.ocaml.org/listinfo/platform
>