Now that 0.9.0 is out, I'd like to ask everyone's opinions about patch review tools. I've been noticing lately that the volume of libvirt patches has increased significantly, and it's getting more and more difficult for me to keep up with reading the traffic, much less doing my part to review the patches. It would be very helpful if I could just see a view of pending patches, each properly colorcoded (or, even better, hidden) based on a patch being ACKed, deprecated, someone else in process of reviewing, etc. I know there are a few tools available, but I've never used any of them and wonder if anyone else has, and if they might be able to make a recommendation on something the libvirt project could use (or maybe something I could just use myself by sending a list feed into an application). I'm sending this message 1) to see if others are feeling the pressure of the extra traffic too (or is my brain just processing more slowly :-/), and 2) to learn what your opinions are of setting up such a system for libvirt (for *optional* use only), and any opinions you have on what's available (or maybe you could provide a recipe for how you already manage all the patches without going crazy). Here's my list of requirements; feel free to add/shoot down: 1) usage must be optional, so it must be able to update itself via monitoring messages on the list (a minimal amount of change/addition to the current message flow might be acceptable, but nothing major, and encountering PATCH/review/ACK messages as currently sent shouldn't make it blow up). 2) keep track of patches that are posted, NACKed, ACKed, re-posted (deprecating the original), and pushed (this should be done by monitoring git, not by looking at emails, as I've noticed patches are often pushed without a corresponding message to the list). 3) would also be nice if there was a place in the UI that those wanting to could "take" a patch for review so that two people didn't spend a lot of time on something not requiring that much attention, at the expense of other ignored patches. 4) maintain patchsets according to the "n/n" notation in the header (I mention this because one comment I saw about Gerrit said that it didn't do this). 5) provide some sort of interface for viewing the patch, annotating it with comments, and sending that back to the list as an ACK/NACK or simply a comment. 6) provide a simple way to save a patchset to files that can be "git am"ed (or maybe even do it for you, automatically creating a branch first, etc. This could possibly even be extended into a command to push a given patchset) 7) (of course it must be open source. Do I even need to say that? :-)) Ideally, a person wanting to use this system should be able to setup their email to filter all libvir-list traffic containing "PATCH" in the subject line, then create an account on the patch review system and handle all patch review via the tool's interface Here's a list of tool that Rich Jones came up with in another discussion on the same topic, along with a few others that were mentioned in the ensuing discussion. To the right, I've included comments from others that seemed interesting to me. Please point out any that you disagree with! Gerrit (https://code.google.com/p/gerrit) "The assumption that one issue == one patch is too deeply embedded" Kiln (http://www.fogcreek.com/kiln/) (proprietary, so probably shouldn't be considered) Patchwork (http://ozlabs.org/~jk/projects/patchwork/) (used by Linux kernel& kvm maintainers) http://www.reviewboard.org/ "didn't work well with git" Also someone pointed out that gitorious has code review aids: http://blog.gitorious.org/2009/11/06/awesome-code-review/ If I were going to investigate one of these and try setting it up, which do you think would have the greatest likelyhood of success (if any)?

On Thu, Apr 07, 2011 at 11:24:04AM -0400, Laine Stump wrote: > Now that 0.9.0 is out, I'd like to ask everyone's opinions about > patch review tools. > > [...] > > > 1) usage must be optional, so it must be able to update itself via > monitoring messages on the list (a minimal amount of change/addition > to the current message flow might be acceptable, but nothing major, > and encountering PATCH/review/ACK messages as currently sent > shouldn't make it blow up). > > [...] > > Ideally, a person wanting to use this system should be able to setup > their email to filter all libvir-list traffic containing "PATCH" in > the subject line, then create an account on the patch review system > and handle all patch review via the tool's interface > > [...] > > Patchwork (http://ozlabs.org/~jk/projects/patchwork/) (used by Linux kernel& kvm maintainers) > For me, any tool which requires visiting a web UI to submit or view patch code review comments/feedback is a non-starter. All code review feedback must be on the mailing list, and correctly threaded.

In other words, it would be a tool which serves a 'reporting' or 'tracking' patch series, not a code review management system. AFAICT, patchwork is the only one expressly designed in this manner. Their website sums it up nicely: "patchwork should supplement mailing lists, not replace them

Patchwork isn't intended to replace a community mailing list; that's why you can't comment on a patch in patchwork. If this were the case, then there would be two forums of discussion on patches, which fragments the patch review process. Developers who don't use patchwork would get left out of the discussion."

To also add to that, public mailing lists are a very good archival system for code review / discussions. Once in a mailing list, you can be pretty sure it'll never disappear from the web& is always searchable from google. The same can't be said of most web apps.