[QGIS-Developer] A plea: more volunteers needed for reviewing backports

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi Nyall,

Thanks for raising this issue!

Back in the "old days" we had assigned "maintainers" to different areas of
the code base. Maybe we could revive this idea but rename it to "reviewers"
and ideally assign more than one person to each area of expertise? It could
be published again, somewhere in the governance section of our website,
e.g. at https://www.qgis.org/en/site/getinvolved/governance/governance.html

As a side effect, if we had such a list, a potential customer could also
see - oh this developer is a reviewer/maintainer of this particular topic -
it could be an incentive to pick this developer or company for development
work. For some insiders, it is a well-known which dev/company has expertise
in which area of QGIS, but for non-insiders, this is not really obvious.

Ideally, besides the volunteers, each of the companies that is active in
QGIS development (like Lutra, Oslandia, OPENGIS, 3Liz, etc. - just to name
a few) could offer one person as a reviewer to a certain area in the code
base. Of course, some, such as Norbit and Lutra are already really active
in packaging QGIS ... and North Road and OPENGIS is already quite active in
reviewing and other maintenance work.

Greetings,
Andreas

On Tue, 23 Mar 2021 at 00:06, Nyall Dawson <nyall.dawson at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi list,
>
> This is a public plea for more developers who are very familiar with
> different parts of the QGIS codebase to become actively involved in
> backport PR management.
>
> We NEED more people to be actively (i.e. daily) monitoring for
> backport PRs and then reviewing them if the backport affects code
> areas which they're knowledgeable about.
>
> Right now there's like... 2... of us doing this on a daily basis, and
> we need more hands and eyes. Regressions are fixed by backports, but
> they can also be introduced by backports. If we don't get more people
> involved in this part of QGIS' maintenance then the stability of the
> patch releases is compromised.
>
> While I'm more than happy to keep reviewing backports which touch
> areas of code I know well, we have a whole stack of backports for
> server fixes, relation fixes, and other parts of QGIS I don't know
> well enough to risk release stability by reviewing myself. These
> backports are currently sitting in the queue for weeks without review,
> and often they stale out and are closed without ever getting merged.
>
> I've also a ton of backports for fixes that I make on a daily basis
> which I cannot self review, so the PR queue gets flooded with my
> backports until I actively pester/harass others to review and approve.
>
> The truth is that the longer the PR queue, the more it stresses me out
> and the less motivation I have to review the incoming feature PRs. We
> have many older feature PRs which are stalled and waiting review for
> months or longer, just because I'm so flooded with managing newer
> incoming PRs that I never have time to review the older ones...
>
> So please, if you know parts of the QGIS code well, and can spare 15
> minutes a day to looking over the backport queue and approving any
> backports you are confident are regression free, then please get
> involved! (or ask your employer to officially allocate you this 15
> minutes/day as a way of them supporting QGIS!)
>
> Nyall
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-- 

--
Andreas Neumann
QGIS.ORG board member (treasurer)
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