Patch Pilot report

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Andrew Bennetts writes:

 > I just finished the first round of patch piloting[.]
 > Robert's doing this week[.]

Thank you, and TIA to Robert!

 > I took a "just do it" approach to piloting patches.

That's not really what I expected of a patch pilot ...

 > If the changes required were fairly small, or even moderate, it
 > usually seemed to me to be easier to just make the tweak and write
 > the missing tests myself, rather than teach and cajole the
 > contributors to do themselves.

... agreed, "teach and cajole" is expensive.  "Suggest and teach if
interested" is less so, and a real investment in the future.  But
that's just theory: is it worth it in your opinion, accounting for the
fact that it surely means fewer patches are landed per pilot?

 > Also, I deliberately chose patches from new contributors over
 > regulars.

I'm not sure I like the sound of that.  My understanding was that the
patch pilot was supposed to help less experienced and/or one-off
contributors to deal with the relatively technical aspects (proper
docs and tests, for example).  That may be a misunderstanding, but you
see where I'm going: if one is needed to get regulars past the
Charybdis of PQM and the Scylla of committers too busy to review,
there's a constricted bottleneck that needs shattering.