Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Fri, 30 Aug 2019 12:44:16 +0000
From:      Brooks Davis <brooks@freebsd.org>
To:        Ed Maste <emaste@freebsd.org>
Cc:        "Rodney W. Grimes" <freebsd-rwg@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net>, FreeBSD Hackers <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>, fcp@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: FCP 20190401-ci_policy: CI policy
Message-ID:  <20190830124416.GC19377@spindle.one-eyed-alien.net>
In-Reply-To: <CAPyFy2CoOH2LTcOQ5mJw=TX1JWB9yBfxZMy%2BxMtAKvg4yCfGSw@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <CAOfEmZgEbT7ni80vWehHm%2B4oPyH3m%2Brb0M_VyxHmNM3rkhyG1Q@mail.gmail.com> <201908291905.x7TJ5Bw8091371@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> <CAPyFy2CoOH2LTcOQ5mJw=TX1JWB9yBfxZMy%2BxMtAKvg4yCfGSw@mail.gmail.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

--vOmOzSkFvhd7u8Ms
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

On Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 08:05:06PM -0400, Ed Maste wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Aug 2019 at 15:05, Rodney W. Grimes
> <freebsd-rwg@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> wrote:
> >
> > Here in lies one of the fundemental problems, this view by some that
> > a "revert commit is something bad, it is kind of punishment".  That is
> > not true.  Reverts are GREAT things, they allow the tree to be returned
> > to a known state, usually quicly.  The original commit is STILL IN SVN,
> > and a bad revert can guess what.. be reverted!.
>=20
> Let me echo Rod here. I'm also very happy that this statement was made
> by one of the original FreeBSD committers.
>=20
> Reverting a change is not an insult, not a punishment, not something
> bad - it's simply an acknowledgement that some aspect of the change
> didn't meet expectations.

We should be considerably more willing to revert changes that break
things.  I agree with Warner that it's worth pinging the developer in
question, but if they don't respond in in a couple hours, I see no
value in waiting further.  At that point any loss of productivity is on
them and they have already wasted considerable productivity for other
committers.

All that being said, the LLVM project's aggressive use of reverts is
sometimes enormously costly to downstreams with large changes[0] and we
should avoid swinging too far toward reverts.  The issue comes about
when a non-trivial patch conflicts with a local change.  When such a
patch is reverted that's another conflict and sometimes you end up
making/unmaking the same fixes multiple times when a change causes
problems in an environment that developer can't test directly.

Some balance is required, but I think we should be considerably more
willing to revert changes where a fix isn't immediately available.

-- Brooks

[0] On the CHERI project we're almost certainly the largest public
downstream for LLVM to the point that they validated the git monorepo
migration tools on our tree(s).

--vOmOzSkFvhd7u8Ms
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc"

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJdaRofAAoJEKzQXbSebgfA7xwH/im4SHdyaGqJtJLmCRu2/HF4
3NyTBv91b3pPBYaukl61xFmMwjyZBeQS9OnxozVhyw5fpGjKCHPNEQzoaUzjEMHm
2iL3ag57Dj0hyNuVgJWyPSauSjozLBOMSrOLJLzs/VWq1R/+325YMUJ6nRxnNewF
YhnOQiErnlFalWUB2QQ3Gg73sSaXdagLTE+EOlCNuFSBQ+ead3A6mOURspGKSj/u
5LHi6Jr4mOVv9hg2Qgt+sN25WbgGW0o/2UDGY7iNDkEJk0CkzYXN3o53V6pabQHJ
9VfTT0V3sf4xf61Bq/Bp0jM0cjBt0FoduoiJab3e9oM+dRRnUf910rpHf3w5S1s=
=9/Vl
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--vOmOzSkFvhd7u8Ms--



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20190830124416.GC19377>