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Date:      Wed, 28 Nov 2012 21:00:13 +0000
From:      "Robert N. M. Watson" <rwatson@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Alfred Perlstein <bright@mu.org>
Cc:        "src-committers@FreeBSD.org" <src-committers@FreeBSD.org>, Andre Oppermann <andre@FreeBSD.org>, Peter Wemm <peter@wemm.org>, "svn-src-all@FreeBSD.org" <svn-src-all@FreeBSD.org>, Gleb Smirnoff <glebius@FreeBSD.org>, "svn-src-head@FreeBSD.org" <svn-src-head@FreeBSD.org>
Subject:   Re: svn commit: r243627 - head/sys/kern
Message-ID:  <F0D6E777-C972-4ABF-99F4-D3DD0EF61102@FreeBSD.org>
In-Reply-To: <645253DB-A722-477B-8E86-FDBD9E3E58C4@mu.org>
References:  <201211272004.qARK4qS8047209@svn.freebsd.org> <CAGE5yCpxOdsjefe6quR_gjs82pk9a2e_H_WUNUWhUGA3WZPJaw@mail.gmail.com> <50B54180.5020608@freebsd.org> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1211272246560.37292@fledge.watson.org> <50B54492.5040100@freebsd.org> <956CE44A-BA0F-4FE4-AA38-F4B90C85ECBA@FreeBSD.org> <50B54CE0.6080008@freebsd.org> <2A12C740-1D72-4D30-B663-47A37AAC2FF3@FreeBSD.org> <50B5C4F1.1020002@freebsd.org> <50B64C43.50001@mu.org> <20121128175116.GI14202@FreeBSD.org> <41E6060B-5A74-4524-9011-2BFFF5B47E24@FreeBSD.org> <645253DB-A722-477B-8E86-FDBD9E3E58C4@mu.org>

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On 28 Nov 2012, at 19:32, Alfred Perlstein <bright@mu.org> wrote:

> Do you think we need another TRB?
>=20
> It could be used to oust undesirable committers if needed.=20

Are we seriously having a discussion in which the merits of favouring pre-co=
mmit code review for the things like TCP stack are in doubt? I'm not saying w=
e need to seek universal consensus on all changes, rather, that I would stro=
ngly prefer that people committing to this code seek review (and clearly ind=
icate it in commit messages) before rather than after sticking things in the=
 tree. This stuff is incredibly subtle, and debugging problems in the field i=
s vastly harder than catching them early in the cycle. I certainly wouldn't c=
ommit any non-trivial change to the code in question without asking someone t=
o go through it line-by-line, and I'd prefer if others took the same view, a=
s I often end up chasing the bugs later, in the field, where it is hardest t=
o do so.

Robert

>=20
> Sent from my iPhone
>=20
> On Nov 28, 2012, at 10:25 AM, "Robert N. M. Watson" <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> w=
rote:
>=20
>>=20
>> On 28 Nov 2012, at 17:51, Gleb Smirnoff wrote:
>>=20
>>> On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 09:39:15AM -0800, Alfred Perlstein wrote:
>>> A> Personally I don't think we need any more anchors attached to people'=
s=20
>>> A> feet when developing FreeBSD.
>>> A>=20
>>> A> Mistakes will happen, they will happen in head.  Slowing down the=20
>>> A> process to eliminate mistakes only works to slow down change and give=
 a=20
>>> A> false sense of "fixing stability" when in fact the only thing "stable=
"=20
>>> A> is the slowness of submitting code.
>>>=20
>>> This will eventually lead back to the situation when no one runs head,
>>> because it is unusable.
>>=20
>> Also, based on past experience: I'm much happier reviewing shaky code bef=
ore it goes into the tree than trying to debug it in situ and having to back=
 it out. If our advice to many companies is that they should start developin=
g products against head, we can't let the quality of the head get back to th=
e way it was in the 5.x timeframe. Several factors have led to our having a n=
early-production quality development head over the last few years -- one is m=
uch heavier use of branched development for features (first Perforce, and mo=
re recently, Subversion, git, etc branches); the other is much heavier use o=
f code review, especially for critical parts of the system. Device driver au=
thors have a lot more leeway, but for core parts of the design, seeking revi=
ew during development of a feature, and then before merging it upstream, sho=
uld be an expectation for all but the most trivial of changes. It's a two-wa=
y street, of course: if you review other people's code, they will review you=
rs, so as more people use review, the pool of potential reviewers goes up as=
 well.
>>=20
>> Robert



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