PR usage by people with commit access

[Ryan Schmidt]

> On Nov 4, 2016, at 1:09 PM, Sterling Smith <smithsp at fusion.gat.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Nov 4, 2016, at 10:50AM, Rainer Müller <raimue at macports.org> wrote:
> 
>> On 2016-11-04 18:10, Ivan Larionov wrote:
>> 
>>> * Ability to get a feedback / review from other project members.
>>> 
>>> We use private github setup on my work and we have a rule that you
>>> shouldn't commit directly to master in a project with multiple
>>> contributors until it's very small change like fixing typo. Open PR,
>>> ask for review, merge. Or fix issues and merge if you got any useful
>>> comments on PR.
>> 
>> Who would be better to review the change then the maintainers of ports
>> themselves? I feel like this would unnecessary slow down the process of
>> getting the update out.
>> 
>> Rainer
> 
> In the past, I have seen responses to svn changelogs directed to the committer and copied to the dev list, so apparently port maintainers who are committers are not always the best reviewers.  How many times has there been a post-svn-commit debate about whether something warranted a revision bump?  I would recommend that any change that changes the build more than a version and checksum change warrants a pull request.  If no one acts to review it within the timeliness dictated of the committer, then they still have the prerogative and authority to commit the changes when they want. 

I am subscribed to the macports-changes list and eventually try to read every commit message, and reply when I have feedback to provide. This reply goes to the macports-dev mailing list, where it can benefit all subscribed developers.

I am not subscribed to the macports-tickets list. I think it would be overwhelming to receive an email for every new ticket and every comment to every ticket. I'm Cc'd on tickets I'm interested in so I'll get emails about those, but not about tickets I'm not already involved with.

Now that we've converted to GitHub, I am automatically receiving emails about each pull request submitted to the MacPorts repositories, and each comment that's made on them. I've tried to participate in some of those, providing feedback on individual lines that are wrong, but it's a lot of work, and often involves follow-up questions from the contributor. And I assume my comments are only seen by the submitter of that pull request and anyone else watching that pull request, and the (I anticipate) very small number of developers watching all pull requests. So I have the impression that my feedback is reaching fewer viewers and is thus a worse use of my time.

Since the conversion to GitHub, I'm receiving several hundred emails a day, which is not a quantity that I'm going to be able to keep up with. I'm probably going to unsubscribe from notifications for new pull requests, and continue to provide email feedback based on what gets pushed to the repository and posted to macports-changes.