Re: GCC review process: how to handle external submissions

[Daniel Berlin <dberlin at dberlin dot org>]

On Monday, March 10, 2003, at 10:14  AM, Steven Bosscher wrote:

> Op ma 10-03-2003, om 15:45 schreef Wolfgang Bangerth:
> > > > > I submitted this to gcc-patches in November, resubmitted it in 
> > > > > December,
> > > > > opened a bug report in January, wrote to gcc-bugs. I got no 
> > > > > replies.
> > >
> > > This has been a problem for quite a while.
> > > [...]
> > > There are too many mailing lists to follow, i.e. gcc-gnats, 
> > > gcc-patches,
> > > gcc-bugs, so sometimes patches submitted by end-users fall through
> > > the cracks.
> >
> > This is not the structural problem we should talk about. Note that 
> > this
> > person sent a patch to *gcc-patches* three times without response. 
> > This
> > applies to at least several of the patches in gnats as well. Heck, I 
> > have
> > done that myself and got no response.
>
> Does bugzilla provide an option to mark PRs that have a patch?
You can mark individual attachments as being a patch, and it will 
notice.

In fact, i'm about to integrate a cool patch viewer that will does
1. Viewing of patches in a pretty way
2. Ability to convert context to unified/etc
3. Attempt to provide diffs from a patch to a given cvs version
4.  interdiffs on patches that are attached to bugs, so you can see the 
differences between them (since you can supersede/obsolete attachments, 
this is useful if you use bugs to track patches).
and a few other things

> > The problem is not that these messages are not seen -- I bet they 
> > are, but
> > nobody feels responsible. We need to have someone with a respected 
> > name
> > (so that he can ask reviewers to look at something) who takes over 
> > this
> > responsibility.
>
> Maybe a patch database would help?  This could be part of the bug
> database, or something completely separate.  gcc-patches is too much a
> discussions list to serve as a patch database.
Bugzilla lets you add user-defined flags to bugs/attachments, including 
having a cc list to whom requests get copied, and making it so you can 
request someone else set the flag.
So one can have a review flag on attachments that people use to request 
review on patches from specific people (or anyone, if it's a general 
patch, and not within some specific person's area).
Requests for setting flags on attachments/bugs are what show up in the 
"My requests" thing.
> Greetz
> Steven