Usability of phabricator review threads for non-phab-users

[Tobias Grosser]

On 01/07/2014 13:11, Manuel Klimek wrote:
> Alp noted that the current setup on how phab reviews land on the list are
> not working for him. I'd be curious whether his setup is special, or
> whether there are more widespread problems. If this is more widely
> perceived as a problem, please speak up, and I'll make sure to prioritize
> the fixes (note that this is unrelated to the "lost email" problem - those
> are always highest priority and as far as I'm aware we diagnosed and fixed
> all of them within 1-2 business days).
>
> If you have the feeling that the phab email workflow makes it hard for you
> to jump into reviews, keep track of reviews, or understand reviews if
> you're not a phab user, please reply to this thread. You don't need to
> provide details, "+1", "please fix", or "doesn't work well for me" are all
> acceptable replies here - I want to get a feeling for the magnitude of the
> problem.

Hi Manuel,

thanks for looking into this.

I remember me having issues due to patch comments missing relevant 
context when looking at them on the mailing list. I think this has been 
both too little code lines, but possibly also previous comments which 
have not been cited. When people use email, they normally ensure that
the relevant code/comments are properly cited. Phabricator does not need 
this in the web interface, which makes the emails sometimes less useful.

However, I must say I don't have much experience with it and keep 
avoiding it, mostly because it does not work offline, I can not use 'vi' 
to search/work through the patches, and I need to go to a web-interface 
to submit patches instead of doing this from the command line (maybe 
there exists a script already). To get these to worlds closer, it would 
be amazing if we could have phabricator to automatically open new review 
threads if patches appear on the mailing list, to integrate comments 
sent on the mailing list and to close issues if it detects a 'committed 
in'. I know this is a lot of work, but I still wanted to mention this as 
features that would make me use phabricator more. (Most likely still 
sending emails, but using it to get
an overview about open reviews or general review status)

Cheers,
Tobias