Re: [patch] gdb/CONTRIBUTE update

[Pedro Alves <palves@redhat.com>]

On 02/26/2013 09:38 AM, Jan Kratochvil wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 10:31:06 +0100, Yao Qi wrote:
>> On 02/22/2013 04:26 AM, Jan Kratochvil wrote:
>>> +	Patch from a contributor needs a review with approval from
>>> +	maintainer.  Still you drive the review process and inclusion
>>> +	process of the patch.  If there is no reply in a week send a new
>>> +	mail (not reply) with PING in its subject.  Occasionally even
>>> +	a PING^2  mail may be needed in another week of no replise.
>>> +
>>
>> Jan,
>> why do we have to post the patch again in the new mail instead of a
>> reply to remind maintainers to review?  If the patch is still
>> applied clearly, I don't see the benefits of doing that.
> 
> With a reply mail users (reviewers) which use sorting of mail folder by
> threads (in Mutt 'o' 't') get the PING mail put under the original mail which
> is far in the past and the PING mail gets hidden+forgotten again due to it.
> 
> This even is not an idea of mine, it was concluded on some GNU Tools Cauldron.

Do you like it?  I don't.

Interesting.  I had seen some pings like that on the gcc list, but I never
understood why people preferred them that way.

One consequence of that model I've often seen in the gcc list (and even
there only a few people tend to ping that way) is occasionally we see
the reviewer OKing in reply to the ping email, instead of replying to
the original submission, which obviously happens because it was quicker
to the reviewer to just hit reply to the ping, read the patch in the
browser (following the url), and hit send.  I don't like this because
it makes archaeology harder, and, people who are tracking the original
thread may not notice the patch had been approved or further discussion had
happened on another thread.

If someone is pinging me, I prefer a reply to the original thread.  I'm
currently using Thunderbird, and it sorts threads by most recent reply,
not by original post date (which I find a more sensible default - why
would one want to sort by original post date by default?).  A separate
email with an url means more work for me, as I then have to go look up the
thread in Thunderbird that corresponds to that url, instead of having it
already handy (as when the ping is in the same thread, and thus displayed
as a child of the original patch).  That's just a silly indirection out of
email to then reply back through email.  It's a little more work for the
pinger as well, who has to look up an url to put in the email.

-- 
Pedro Alves