[cfe-dev] [RFC] Deprecate pre-commit email code reviews in favor of Phabricator

Mon Jun 7 08:44:36 PDT 2021

Code review guidelines patch is available for review: https://reviews.llvm.org/D103811.

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Krzysztof Parzyszek  kparzysz at quicinc.com<mailto:kparzysz at quicinc.com>   AI tools development

From: David Blaikie <dblaikie at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2021 3:01 PM
To: Krzysztof Parzyszek <kparzysz at quicinc.com>
Cc: llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>; clangd-dev at lists.llvm.org; openmp-dev at lists.llvm.org; lldb-dev at lists.llvm.org; cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org; libcxx-dev at lists.llvm.org; flang-dev at lists.llvm.org; parallel_libs-dev at lists.llvm.org
Subject: [EXT] Re: [cfe-dev] [RFC] Deprecate pre-commit email code reviews in favor of Phabricator

On Tue, May 18, 2021 at 6:50 AM Krzysztof Parzyszek <kparzysz at quicinc.com<mailto:kparzysz at quicinc.com>> wrote:

Post-commit reviews are conducted, in order of preference, on Phabricator,
This still seems like a change in practice that I'm not in favor of, personally - due to the current divergence between email and phab review feedback. Yes, this would be one way to unify it - but I'm not sure it's necessarily the best one.

I'd suggest leaving this to a separate proposal so as not to complicate/muddy the waters of the formalization of pre-commit review practice.

I simply broke up the existing sentence from the documentation into two parts, one about pre-commit reviews and the other about all other code reviews (which are basically the post-commit reviews, although I’m open to corrections here).  The first part was modified to reflect the proposed change, the second part was left unchanged.

I think the issue is that the original phrasing was probably only intended to describe the preference for pre-commit review. (I think statements about post-commit review could reasonably read to be only those that say "post-commit review", in this ( https://llvm.org/docs/CodeReview.html#can-code-be-reviewed-after-it-is-committed ) section.

So I think (at least in terms of how to read it in a way that matches existing practice) the original wording amounted to something like this:

... "post-commit review can use any of the tools listed below" ...
... "pre-commit review is done in this order of phab, email, etc... "

ie: the post-commit review didn't have the same order of preference as pre-commit review.

I'd probably pull out the post-commit review-specific wording back up to where post-commit review is discussed, and leave the rest of this to talk about pre-commit review (most of this document discussing unqualified "review" seems predominantly to be talking about "pre-commit review" except the part that talks about "post commit review").

Probably move the "on our web-based code-review tool (see Code Reviews with Phabricator), by email on the relevant project’s commit mailing list, on the project’s development list, or on the bug tracker." (without the "in order of preference") up to the "post-commit review" section, instead of referencing a version of it here.

In this RFC I only want to change the part of the documentation that pertains specifically to pre-commit code reviews.  If the wording I used creates confusion, what would you suggest instead?

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Krzysztof Parzyszek  kparzysz at quicinc.com<mailto:kparzysz at quicinc.com>   AI tools development

From: David Blaikie <dblaikie at gmail.com<mailto:dblaikie at gmail.com>>
Sent: Monday, May 17, 2021 4:40 PM
To: Krzysztof Parzyszek <kparzysz at quicinc.com<mailto:kparzysz at quicinc.com>>
Cc: llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>>; clangd-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:clangd-dev at lists.llvm.org>; openmp-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:openmp-dev at lists.llvm.org>; lldb-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:lldb-dev at lists.llvm.org>; cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org>; libcxx-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:libcxx-dev at lists.llvm.org>; flang-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:flang-dev at lists.llvm.org>; parallel_libs-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:parallel_libs-dev at lists.llvm.org>
Subject: [EXT] Re: [cfe-dev] [RFC] Deprecate pre-commit email code reviews in favor of Phabricator

On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 11:12 AM Krzysztof Parzyszek via cfe-dev <cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org<mailto:cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:

This is a revision of the previous RFC[1].  This RFC limits the scope to pre-commit reviews only.

Statement:

Our current code review policy states[2]:

“Code reviews are conducted, in order of preference, on our web-based code-review tool (see Code Reviews with Phabricator), by email on the relevant project’s commit mailing list, on the project’s development list, or on the bug tracker.”

This proposal is to limit pre-commit code reviews only to Phabricator.  This would apply to all projects in the LLVM monorepo.  With the change in effect, the amended policy would read:

“Pre-commit code reviews are conducted on our web-based code-review tool (see Code Reviews with Phabricator).
I'm with you here ^, this seems to document/formalize existing practice - though does this accurately reflect all the projects in the mororepo? I get the impression that mlir, maybe flang, etc might be doing reviews differently?

Post-commit reviews are conducted, in order of preference, on Phabricator,
This still seems like a change in practice that I'm not in favor of, personally - due to the current divergence between email and phab review feedback. Yes, this would be one way to unify it - but I'm not sure it's necessarily the best one.

I'd suggest leaving this to a separate proposal so as not to complicate/muddy the waters of the formalization of pre-commit review practice.

by email on the relevant project’s commit mailing list, on the project’s development list, or on the bug tracker.”

Current situation:

  1.  In a recent llvm-dev thread[3], Christian Kühnel pointed out that pre-commit code reviews rarely originate via an email (most are started on Phabricator), although, as others pointed out, email responses to an ongoing review are not uncommon.  (That thread also contains examples of mishaps related to the email-Phabricator interactions, or email handling itself.)
  2.  We have Phabricator patches that automatically apply email comments to the Phabricator reviews, although reportedly this functionality is not fully reliable[4,5].  This can cause review comments to be lost in the email traffic.

Benefits:

  1.  Single way of doing pre-commit code reviews: these code reviews are a key part of the development process, and having one way of performing them would make the process clearer and unambiguous.
  2.  Review authors and reviewers would only need to monitor one source of comments without the fear that a review comment may end up overlooked.
  3.  This change simply codifies an existing practice.

Concerns:

  1.  Because of the larger variety, email clients may offer better accessibility options than web browsers.

[1] https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2021-May/150344.html

[2] https://llvm.org/docs/CodeReview.html#what-tools-are-used-for-code-review

[3] https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2021-April/150129.html

[4] https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2021-April/150136.html

[5] https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2021-April/150139.html

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Krzysztof Parzyszek  kparzysz at quicinc.com<mailto:kparzysz at quicinc.com>   AI tools development

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