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

[Florian Hahn via llvm-dev]

Hi Alex,

On 27/08/2017 00:01, Alex Bradbury via llvm-dev 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').
> 

Thanks for your efforts to improve this process.

I played around with the Phabricator API a while ago (I think after a 
post where you suggested improving the experience for first-time 
contributors) and built a small script that identifies first-time 
contributors and adds myself as subscriber to those reviews.
I shared the script here https://reviews.llvm.org/D37259 .
It would need some more work to turn it into a proper script, but I 
thought it would be a good time to share it now.

I think it should be relatively easy to find reviews where activity has 
died off using the API (excluding comments & patches submitted to 
llvm-commits directly).

Cheers,
Florian