Patch Piloting: how much of the extra mile do you go?

[Scott Moser]

On Mon, 18 Jul 2011, Daniel Holbach wrote:

> Hello everybody,
>
> I'm interested to see how patch piloting works out for you as reviewers
> and how much the workflows in our team differ.
>
> When I did my shift last week I noticed that a couple of merge proposals
> had their last comment saying "Would you mind forwarding the patch to
> Debian/Upstream?" with no activity since. I guess many of us check the
> bug or merge proposal later on again and dismiss it as something that
> was already looked at. The problem is obvious: if the contributor has no
> interest in doing this (or does not know how), it might sit there for a
> very long time.

As an example (of something I don't know what to do with), there are
currently 5 dependent merge proposals in the queue:
   lp:~pali/ubuntu/oneiric/initramfs-tools/initramfs-tools
   lp:~pali/ubuntu/oneiric/cryptsetup/cryptsetup
   lp:~pali/ubuntu/oneiric/lsb/lsb
   lp:~pali/ubuntu/oneiric/kubuntu-default-settings/kubuntu-default-settings
They're all dependent on:
  https://code.launchpad.net/~pali/ubuntu/natty/plymouth/plymouth/+merge/61897

The User/developer developed their changes against Ubuntu, because that is
where they get their software.  To He/She (and I would suspect a *great*
number of people), it is quite possible that Ubuntu acceptance is really
all that matters.

>From Ubuntu's perspective, it was the right thing to ask that it be
submitted upstream to see how they felt about it.  The user went ahead and
did that, but no-one has responded upstream on the mailing list to the
post.

The patches can surely use some work, but I believe that the general goal
is desirable (even if you disagree, you can imagine a case that would
be).  It seems quite likely that if the developer does not have help,
they're quite likely to
 a.) give up on this patch
 b.) give up on submitting to Ubuntu

Should we go the *extra* mile and push on the Upstream, and help to clean
the patches up and provide doc?

I don't want to sound like I'm just "Punching the clock", but this series
of proposals could very easily eat my 4 hour block of piloting.  I think
that is one reason that people have shied away from it.

To me, a large value of the Patch Pilot was to give someone a "friend" or
"champion" in Ubuntu.  This series of patches is in-need of that.