[llvm-dev] [RFC] 'Review corner' section in LLVM Weekly

[Alex Denisov via llvm-dev]

Hi Alex, hi list,

I think this is a great idea.
I could suggest you setting up Google Forms[1] (or something similar). This way you can give access to some volunteers (count me in) who can help you moderate those submissions.

As a side note, Rust has a thing called “This week in Rust”[2], which is basically a community moderated weekly. You may adopt some parts of this approach if it sounds good to you.

[1] https://www.google.com/forms/about/
[2] https://this-week-in-rust.org

> On 27. Aug 2017, at 01:01, Alex Bradbury via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi all. I'm assuming most people reading this email are familiar with LLVM's
> code review process <http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#code-reviews>
> as well as LLVM Weekly, the development newsletter I've written and sent out
> every Monday since Jan 2014. Since that time, it's provided something of a
> "signal boost" for important mailing list discussions and commits. I feel it
> could play a similar role in helping patches that are stuck waiting for code
> reviews, or drawing attention to submissions from first time contributors.
> There may be alternative or complementary approaches to tackling this
> perceived problem we should discuss - I'm coming from a position of trying to
> apply the tools I have at my disposal. Also see my previous thoughts on this
> issue <http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2016-November/106696.html>.
> 
> I don't think it's controversial to suggest that while the code review process
> works fantastically well a lot of the time, some patches fall through the
> cracks and long delays in review feedback can put people off contributing to
> LLVM. As was pointed out in response to the last RFC, very long review times
> are problems for long-time contributors as well as newcomers.
> 
> My proposal is simple: add a new 'Review corner' section to LLVM Weekly to
> help highlight patches that need more reviewer input. There are two main
> categories I'd like to focus on:
> 1) patches from first-time contributors
> 2) patches where review activity has died off (i.e. they're 'stuck').
> 
> Obviously this is something that I can just go ahead and do, but I'd
> appreciate feedback on whether this would be useful, as well as the specifics
> of my proposed approach. I'd argue such a listing does provide value above and
> beyond the firehose of {llvm,cfe}-commits, as the two mentioned categories are
> not easily discoverable.
> 
> How to select the patches to include? I'm going to rule out manual curation -
> LLVM Weekly is already a large time commitment and I'm not convinced trawling
> llvm-commits is the way to about this even if time weren't a problem. Instead
> I suggest that authors of patches that have got stuck in the review process
> should submit their work for inclusion via a simple web form. If reviews have
> stalled for a given period of time (1/2 weeks?), just submit a link to the
> patch, and up to two sentences describing what the patch does and why people
> might want to take a look at it. This might also be used to highlight patches
> that aren't short of reviews but could benefit from a wider audience
> (obviously if changes are large enough, an RFC should be submitted to
> llvm-dev/cfe-dev as usual). The Phabricator API could be used to identify
> patches from first time contributors for automatic inclusion, and ideally to
> track the stats related to previously included patches (perhaps generate and
> include credits for those who stepped up and helped review the previous week's
> list?).
> 
> So, what do people think, is this worth a go? I recognise this proposal makes
> a fairly large assumption, that lack of visibility is the problem to be
> solved. If the underlying problem is that not enough people have the time or
> willingness to review code, no amount of signal boosting is going to improve
> things.
> 
> Thanks for reading,
> 
> Alex
> _______________________________________________
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> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
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--
AlexDenisov
Software Engineer, https://lowlevelbits.org

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