Re: RFC: Github PR bot questions

[Miguel Ojeda <miguel.ojeda.sandonis@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2021 at 5:24 PM Laurent Pinchart
<laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com> wrote:
>
> There are some features (or lack thereof) of git..b that I suspect
> actively decrease the quality of the hosted software. For instance, the
> inability to comment on the commit messages during review can play a
> role in the average low quality of those messages. Similarly, review is

It only decreases the quality of the repository if you allow the
commits to go in.

The same happens in the LKML -- some people have sent bad messages,
but we correct them and they learn.

Also, as soon as you have a queue of well-written PRs (equivalently:
messages in lore), then it is easier for others to know what the
customs for a given project are.

> Developers who have only been exposed to those platforms are very likely
> to never have learnt the importance of commit messages, and of proper
> split of changes across commits. Those are issues that are inherent to
> those platforms and that we will likely need to handle in an automated
> way (at least to some extent) or maintainers will become crazy (I know
> we already suffer from those issues with the mailing list-based
> workflow, but I believe it would get worse, not better, and some of our
> maintainers are already suffering way more than they should).

I am not sure it would get worse: in Rust for Linux, contributors that
were new to the kernel process learnt quite quickly how to write
proper commit messages.

I think all depends on how willing to learn people is and how strict
maintainers are enforcing things.

But I agree that a bot that automatically performs the basic reviews
helps *a lot*.

Cheers,
Miguel