[llvm-dev] Anyone doing code reviews via mailing lists?

Krzysztof Parzyszek via llvm-dev
2021-04-23T16:55:31Z

I think we should phase-out email reviews in favor of doing it directly via
Phabricator.

My reasons:

  1.  Phabricator allows for both pre- and post-commit reviews.  You can “raise
concern” with any commit, including those that did not have a pre-commit review
on phab.
  2.  The email-phabricator integration is still deficient despite a lot of
effort having been put into it.  Moreover, it’s not likely that it will ever be
fully functional.
  3.  Email communication is “fragile”. This one is based more on my personal
experience, but even simply following a discussion on llvm-dev has been
difficult.  I now have to use Outlook (corporate reasons…) and Outlook fails at
keeping email threads together.  Replies to the same tread are scattered into a
mini-forest instead staying as a single tree.  There are issues with every email
client formatting the replies differently: top-post mixed with bottom-post mixed
with inline text, with people quoting 500 lines of text only to insert a
single-line response, and so on, and so forth.  Some of it is due to my use of
Outlook, some of it is independent from it.  This “infinite flexibility” of
email structure is the reason why I doubt that the Phabricator integration will
ever work.
  4.  Phabricator’s interface makes every review look the same, is readable, and
doesn’t make it easy to unintentionally clutter it with junk.
     *   Finally, it seems like nowadays it’s easier to create a Phabricator
account than to sign up to the mailing lists…



--
Krzysztof Parzyszek  kparzysz at quicinc.com<mailto:kparzysz at
quicinc.com>   AI tools development

From: llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org> On Behalf Of Mehdi
AMINI via llvm-dev
Sent: Friday, April 23, 2021 11:01 AM
To: Hubert Tong <hubert.reinterpretcast at gmail.com>
Cc: llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>
Subject: [EXT] Re: [llvm-dev] Anyone doing code reviews via mailing lists?



On Fri, Apr 23, 2021 at 8:57 AM Hubert Tong via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at
lists.llvm.org<mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
On Fri, Apr 23, 2021 at 11:25 AM Christian Kühnel via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at
lists.llvm.org<mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
So it looks like the information we have on the mailing list and in Phabricator
is diverging, as those emails do not get parsed back into Phabricator.

I recall noticing that Phabricator also doesn't emit inline code change
suggestions into the e-mail record.

Yes: which is an indication that not all the content is on the mailing-list
either :(

--
Mehdi

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