Re: Commitfest problems

On 11.12.2014 16:06, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 11:00:21PM -0800, Josh Berkus wrote:
>>
>> I will add:
>>
>> 4. commitfest managers have burned out and refuse to do it again
> 
> Agreed. The "fun", if it was ever there, has left the commitfest 
> process.

I've never been a CFM, but from my experience as a patch author and
reviewer, I think there are two or three reasons for that (of course,
I'm not saying those are the most important ones or the only ones):

1) unclear definition of what CFM is expected to do
  The current wiki page describing the role of CFM [1] is rather  obsolete, IMHO. For example it says that CFM assigns
patchesro  reviewers, posts announcements to pgsql-rrreviewers, etc.
 
  I don't think this was really followed in recent CFs.
  This however results in people filling the gaps with what they  believe the CFM should do, causing misunderstandings
etc.Shall  we update the description a bit, to reflect the current state  of affairs?
 
  Maybe we should also consider which responsibilities should be  shifted back to the developers and reviewers. E.g. do
wereally  expect the CFM to assign patches to reviewers?
 


2) not really following the rules
  We do have a few rules that we don't follow as much as we should,  notably:
  * 1:1 for patches:reviews (one review for each submitted patch)  * no new patches after the CF starts (post it to the
nextone)  * CF ends at a specific date
 
  I believe violating those rules is related to (1) because it may  lead to perception that CFM makes them up or does
notenforce them  equally for all patches.
 


3) manual processing that could be automated
  I think the CF site was a huge step forward, but maybe we could  improve it, to automate some of the CFM tasks? For
example integrating it a bit more tightly with the mailinglist (which would  make the life easier even for patch
authorsand reviewers)?
 


However as I said before, I never was a CFM - I'd like to hear from the
actual CFMs what's their opinion on this.


kind regards
Tomas

[1] https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Running_a_CommitFest