From owner-freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Thu May 31 21:02:15 2018 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2610:1c1:1:606c::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8841FEFA179 for ; Thu, 31 May 2018 21:02:15 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from linimon@lonesome.com) Received: from mail.soaustin.net (mail.soaustin.net [192.108.105.60]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (Client CN "mail.soaustin.net", Issuer "Let's Encrypt Authority X3" (verified OK)) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 3453C7F5CA for ; Thu, 31 May 2018 21:02:14 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from linimon@lonesome.com) Received: from lonesome.com (bones.soaustin.net [192.108.105.22]) by mail.soaustin.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 1E8D9E38; Thu, 31 May 2018 16:02:14 -0500 (CDT) Date: Thu, 31 May 2018 16:02:13 -0500 From: Mark Linimon To: Dieter BSD Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: PRs are being closed for bogus reasons :-( Message-ID: <20180531210212.GD24090@lonesome.com> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.23 (2014-03-12) X-Mailman-Approved-At: Thu, 31 May 2018 21:51:32 +0000 X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 31 May 2018 21:02:15 -0000 On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 01:31:32PM -0700, Dieter BSD wrote: > Standard operating procedure at FreeBSD is: > > Ignore PR for years. > Close PR because it is "old". > > Question: In what universe is this acceptable? The sender of the messages in question was me. I have tried for years to get more people to work on PRs. I have simply failed. We have far too many PRs coming in vs. the number of committers willing to do the work to get them in committable form; or, work through the diagnosis. So I've failed at the first part. For the second part, if we're talking about things like FreeBSD 8 and 9, there are simply no committer who are going to work on them any more. I doubt we have many committers that will look at any issue on 10, either, as it approaches EOL. We even have some who prefer to only work on -current. At some point it's simply realistic to say "this PR is never going to be worked on". I'd like to see us do a lot better at dealing with "PRs with patches" -- even more so than "can't get FreeBSD to run" -- but without some kind of set of new volunteers willing to work on only such issues, it simply isn't going to happen. Please don't say "make the committers do xyz". All discussions of that form in the past have led nowhere. Please don't say "well, just spend money on the problem". Define who will be spending money, who will be receving the money, and under what terms they will continue to receive the money. # closed per month? That just makes people go for the easy ones. But under what metric do we keep paying them otherwise? tl:dr; problem reports are an area where relying on volunteers is admittedly insufficient, but no one has solved the "do it without volunteers" problem. And, this is not the first time we've had this discussion on the mailing lists -- I hope someone comes up with new, concrete, proposals, but I am not hopeful. mcl