Patch Pilot and the Cloud

[Vincent Ladeuil]

Hi all,

The Patch Pilot role is becoming more important these days as shown by
the queue length over the last weeks: there are (as I write this) 28
active reviews or unmerged proposals (https://code.launchpad.net/bzr).

It means our project get more and more contributors and those whose got
patches accepted are coming back with more.

When we first discussed this initiative there were some concerns about
our 'tests required' policy and whether we should lower the entry
barrier there. I'm happy to say this turned out to be a bit pessimistic
as the contributions are now including tests and in most cases good
ones. When they don't, it's usually a couple of exchanges to help them
(as in all reviews).

We also get more reviews done by non-committers which helps a lot
processing all the proposals. The committers are also reviewing more
than before (IMHO). So many thanks to *all* !

Yet, the length queue is growing... Due to some unexpected volcano
acitivity[1] we experiment some delays for landing a couple of
proposals but the cloud is now gone[2].

But a more likely explanation is just that we need even more reviewers
and also more pilots.

I've been piloting for the last two weeks but nobody has volunteered for
this week :-/ But even during these two weeks, I didn't find the time to
review the worked on proposals nor the bugs with patches

Please, consider being the patch pilot this week or, failing that,
review !

Given that the landing process is more and more streamlined, the Pilot
itself doesn't have to be a core committer either (but committers
shouldn't hesitate to be Pilots ;), in addition to landing proposals
(which can be done by *any* core committer), a lot of the Pilot work is
also to ensure the proposals themselves get processed by:

- nudging second reviewers,
- changing the status to 'Work In progress' or 'Approved',
- asking for Contributor Agreements,
- propose tweaks to be considered for inclusion in the proposal.

In short, many things need to be done apart from the landing itself so
being a core committer is less and less required to be a Pilot.

As of today, many contributions are waiting for a second approval and it
contradicts the piloting spirit to leave such proposals hanging out.

As mentioned above, there are a lot of worked on proposals:
https://code.edge.launchpad.net/bzr/+merges?field.status=WORK_IN_PROGRESS&field.status-empty-marker=1

If you happen to be the author of one, or interested in the work done
there, give it a look if only to mark it rejected or just nudge the
author for some feeedback.

We also have bugs with patches
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/bzr/+patches which can receive the same
kind of treatment.

There is a lot of valuable work waiting to land, let's not waste it.

      Vincent

[1]: We tried a new way (greatly enhancing the experience, thanks to
     Robert) to land proposals via pqm by using some new launchpad
     features which revealed some bugs.

[2]: The experiment is temporarily suspended waiting for these bugs to
     be fixed.