git-ubuntu MP workflows in Launchpad

[Bryce Harrington]

On Thu, Jun 29, 2023 at 09:13:01PM +0200, Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> Hey Bryce,
> 
> Le 29/06/2023 à 20:12, Bryce Harrington a écrit :
> > I do love automation, however I think we shouldn't rule out letting this
> > be somewhat manual.  I.e. we already tell non-git-ubuntu sponsorees to
> > manually sub ubuntu-sponsors:
> > 
> >    https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/Contributing
> >    "Set the bug to Status "Confirmed". Assign to "Nobody". Subscribe the
> >    ubuntu-sponsors team to add your bug to the Sponsorship Queue."
> > 
> > So we could just have the docs direct them to add both ~ubuntu-sponsors
> > *and*  ~ubuntu-sponsors-reporter, and it wouldn't be inconsistent with
> > established procedures.
> 
> The fact that it matches the existing situation doesn't make it the right
> outcome though...

Oh 100% agreed there.  Unsubscribing is a poor way to track state, and
can be lossy in multiple ways, as you point out.  But there is value in
having similar processes work in consistent fashion.

> In practice we often have bugs where the contributor did what was asked to
> address the reviewers feedback but forgot to subscribe back the sponsors.
> With the current workflow we have very little visibility on those cases and
> they often end up lost in the launchpad noise.
>
> It would be nice if we had a way to at least query for those bugs so we
> could review recent activity and see if there are cases were sponsors should
> be subscribed back and hadn't...

Yes, this is a good illustration of the point I made about there being
essentially two different states needing tracked, with this describing
the review state for the MP.  In a bug-centric workflow, we would be
able to set the bug to "Incomplete (without response)" which
automatically gets set to "Incomplete (with response)" once there's a
new comment on the bug.  To the user the "reporter status" is just
"Incomplete" in both cases, yet for the reviewer there are actually two
substates - "with response" and "without response" - that can be queried
for, so we can review recent activity and make adjustments to the
visible state.

Something equivalent to that but for Launchpad MP's would be very
helpful, and would give us a better workflow than the one we have using
subscription/unsubscription.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure if this is
doable with how Launchpad MPs work currently.

Bryce