[LLVMdev] Usability of phabricator review threads for non-phab-users

[Aaron Ballman]

On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 7:11 AM, Manuel Klimek <klimek at google.com> 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.

I gave Phab a shot a while back, found it didn't fit into my workflow,
and went back to performing all of my reviews via email. I would be
amenable to giving Phab another shot in the future, but right now, I
would say it doesn't work for me as a review tool and it's not an
interface I use when performing my reviews. From an email-only
reviewer perspective, Phab has some problems (but they seem to be
resolved quickly when brought up): Phab emails not making it to the
list, emails from the list not making it to Phab, Phab duplicating
emails sent to the list, incomprehensible messages from Phab, thread
splitting, etc. I chalk these up to "early adoption within a big
community", and while they're all annoying to varying degrees, nothing
has struck me as a deal-break or impossible to resolve.

Personally, I have a weak preference for reviewing items that do not
originate from Phab, but that doesn't discourage me from responding to
Phab reviews.

~Aaron