Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2000 14:18:26 -0700 From: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com> To: Paul Richards <paul@originative.co.uk> Cc: Christopher Masto <chris@netmonger.net>, Warner Losh <imp@village.org>, Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.org>, Joseph Scott <joseph.scott@owp.csus.edu>, Brian Somers <brian@FreeBSD.org>, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org, freebsd-security@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/usr.bin/finger finger.c Message-ID: <83262.970607906@winston.osd.bsdi.com> In-Reply-To: Message from Paul Richards <paul@originative.co.uk> of "Tue, 03 Oct 2000 18:32:28 BST." <39DA182C.C70ED553@originative.co.uk>
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> I think we should have a stable release team, that changes to the stable Again, I don't think anything more substantive is required than getting our developers to take on more "ownership" of the -stable branch and, in so doing, create a defacto "stable release team" where more eyeballs are going over the changes, more people are vetting changes and things like the finger screwup are found almost immediately because people are actually LOOKING AT THE COMMITS which go into -stable. That doesn't require any huge changes in process so much as it simply requires more buy-in to -stable by committers We're obviously never going to stop making mistakes because we're human and humans make mistakes, whether it's in writing code for FreeBSD or for the European Space Agency, but we could at least get better at CATCHING those mistakes before they actually go out in release form and for that to happen, more people need to be actively involved in the process of both writing and reading code. We don't need any additional layers of bureaucracy or special committees since those merely insulate the engineer from his true function: Coding and reviewing code. If it's now part of your full-time hattism to worry about this then I hope you'll start spending some number of hours each day in reviewing each and every change which goes into -stable. However many other people are doing this as well or what label you put on them is not so important since you may find problems that another dozen engineers just missed, nor will being a member of any special group make you any more effective at doing that. I resist the creation of such groups, in fact, because it tends to lend the often false impression that "somebody else" is handling problems and that's how stuff starts slipping through the cracks. The bulk of our developers start figuring that they can stop taking responsibility for X, Y and Z because that's clearly the responsibility of the Foo team despite the fact that the Foo team currently has 50% of its members on vacation and the other 50% are kind of burnt-out that week. Keeping -stable stable should be everyone's job, and making that an actual reality rather than just a statement would go a long ways towards preventing what just happened from happening again. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message
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