Patch Pilot report

[Martin Pool]

2009/11/30 Robert Collins <robertc at robertcollins.net>:
> On Mon, 2009-11-30 at 16:05 +1100, Martin Pool wrote:
>
>> > I agree with Martin's concern that a pilot that tries to clear the backlog would
>> > be overly burdened if they remained responsible for that backlog after their
>> > week in the pilot's seat.  I also think Robert makes a good point that handoffs
>> > are costly and should be minimised.
>>
>> Essentially the problem with having people retain pilot responsibility
>> for some patches is that it complicates the queue state in a way that
>> isn't modeled in the software.  The rule for the pp is no longer "try
>> to get the queue emptied."
>
> But that wasn't the rule we proposed in Brisbane. We proposed 'help new
> contributions be acted on promptly.' I think having a project goal  of
> having the queue empty is an interesting conversation, but it's focused
> on the queue. I'm proposing that we focus on new contributors and what
> will give them the simplest experience.

Apparently we are all a bit unclear about precisely what the proposoal
was.  I agree the real goal is to help new contributions be acted
upon, but I think we'll find the merge proposals list a more effective
tool if we always keep it as a list of things that can actually be
acted upon.

We both want to make sure this is sustainable in the long term by
making the commitment of pilots bounded: they don't have to do it
forever and they don't have to finish every single patch.

I think in practice we can get some more data by having different
pilots do what variation they think best and then we can see what
shakes out.

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>