Re: To Steering Committee: RFC for patch revert policy (PR48403, bootstrap broken on many targets)

[Martin Jambor <mjambor at suse dot cz>]

Hi,

On Mon, Apr 04, 2011 at 03:51:21PM -0700, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> Steven Bosscher <stevenb.gcc@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > My proposal would be: A patch may be reverted immediately by anyone
> > with SVN write access if bootstrap is broken for more than 24 hours on
> > any primary target. With proper notification to everyone involved,
> > obviously.
> 
> I agree.
> 
> At the summit in October there was a discussion about this.  I was on
> the side of fast rollback for new failures.  Would anybody care to
> present the opposite view with regard to a patch like this?  Can we
> agree on fast rollback for bootstrap failures on x86/x86_64 GNU/Linux
> systems?

Depends on who would do it or have the right to do it.  If the
proposal is that just about anybody with SVN write access who has a
bootstrap failure in their build and bisected it - or thinks they have
bisected it - to a particular patch could revert the patch then I am
against on the grounds that I do not trust all of these people to use
common sense before acting.

Having said that, I agree that broken trunk for more than a day is a
very annoying and generally a very bad thing, be it a weekend or not.
So I think that global reviewers and maintainers of the respected
areas (or the patch authors themselves, for that matter) should be
expected to approve reverting offending patches when this happens
after some very basic evaluation of the situation because I trust them
to use common sense.  And there's no need to change the rules for
that.

Thanks,

Martin