Re: [admin] Testing and GitHub login names

On Mon, 22 Apr 2013, Arthur Barstow wrote:

>> The only thing that we ask is that pull requests not be merged by whoever 
>> made the request. 
>
> Is this to prevent the `fox guarding the chicken coop`, so to speak?
>
> If a test facilitator submits tests (i.e. makes a PR) and everyone that 
> reviews them says they are OK, it seems like the facilitator should be able 
> to do the merge.

Yes, my view is that Robin is trying to enforce the wrong condition here. 
The problem isn't with people merging their own changes; it's with 
unreviewed changes being merged. Unfortunately github doesn't naturally 
provide any way to track progress of a review and therefore there isn't 
any way to tell that review is complete.

Just to signal the end of the review we could adopt some convention like 
leaving a comment "Accepted" to indicate that the reviewer believes that 
all commits have been fully reviewed and there are no further issues to be 
resolved.

(as an aside, I note that critic does a much better job here. It allows 
reviewers to mark when they have completed reviewing each file in each 
commit. It also records exactly how each issue raised was resolved, either 
by the commit that fixed it or by the person that decided to mark the 
issue as resolved)

>> So anyone with a GitHub account is already 100% set up to contribute.
>> 
>> If you *do* wish to help with the reviewing and organisation effort, you're 
>> more than welcome to and I'll be happy to add you. I just wanted to make 
>> sure that people realise there's zero overhead for regular contributions.

Indeed, there are currently 41 open pull requests and that number is not 
decreasing. Getting more help with the reviewing is essential. But that's 
a Hard Problem because reviewing is both difficult and boring.

Received on Monday, 22 April 2013 20:13:17 UTC