[llvm-dev] [PITCH] Improvements to LLVM Decision Making

[Doerfert, Johannes via llvm-dev]

On 01/15, James Henderson via llvm-dev wrote:
> One other thought: any formal review period needs to be long enough for
> people to contribute to if they have any annual leave from work or
> whatever. For example, if the review period were to be set to two weeks,
> I'd have missed proposals made at the start of roughly 2-3 different 2 week
> periods last year. It would have been worse for 1 week. On the other hand,
> a 3 week period would have meant I'd be able to read and respond to every
> review. Note this is just an example - I'm not concretely suggesting 3
> weeks; perhaps it should be longer for bigger changes etc?

There are various opinions on this (see for example the discussion here
[0]).

My take is that there is no fixed reasonable time to review and respond.
There is a minimal one, due to weekends and time zones, but as soon as
we take vacation/trips into account the problem is unbounded. Instead, I
argue that post-reviews and potential revers are acceptable. If a
consensus was reached and a reasonable* amount of time has passed
changes should make it into the repository to guarantee timely progress
for contributors. If problems are encountered later, either because the
change was not on someones radar or because no one anticipated some
problematic interaction, we should be flexible. A post-review discussion
is appropriate if improvements are needed, a potential revert and
follow-up review are appropriate if it was an actual breaking change.


* Both "consensus" and "reasonable amount of time" are arguably
  vague here. Appropriate metrics depend on the impact of the proposed
  change and written guidelines would be helpful [1].


[0] http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2019-November/136808.html
[1] https://reviews.llvm.org/D71916
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