llvm dev - Oct 2021 - [cfe-dev] RFC: Code Review Process

On Tue, Oct 5, 2021 at 9:48 AM Renato Golin via cfe-dev <
cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Oct 2021 at 17:06, Tom Stellard via llvm-dev <
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
>> - Any other information that you think will help the Board of Directors
>> make the best decision.
>
> - Foundation Board will have 30 days to make a final decision about using
>> GitHub Pull Requests and then communicate a migration plan to the
community.
>
>
> Hi Tom,
>
> Please help me here, I think I'm severely misunderstanding what this
> means...
>
> I'm reading it that the "Board of Directors" will make a
decision and
> communicate to the community, apparently through some undisclosed internal
> process.
> ...
>
I want to take the other side here, and say that I appreciate that the
board is trying to provide more structure for this decision making process.
I don't think the board is trying to step in and take ownership of the
decision, they are trying to solicit input and reflect it back to LLVM
developers in an efficient way. It has long been clear that LLVM needs a
more effective process for building consensus and making decisions, and in
the absence of that, the board came up with this ad hoc process. That seems
very reasonable to me.

For everyone else who has suggestions on how we could run our infra better,
my understanding is that you can get involved in the infrastructure working
group by emailing iwg at llvm.org.
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On Thu, 7 Oct 2021 at 21:48, Reid Kleckner <rnk at google.com> wrote:
> I want to take the other side here, and say that I appreciate that the
> board is trying to provide more structure for this decision making process.
> I don't think the board is trying to step in and take ownership of the
> decision, they are trying to solicit input and reflect it back to LLVM
> developers in an efficient way. It has long been clear that LLVM needs a
> more effective process for building consensus and making decisions, and in
> the absence of that, the board came up with this ad hoc process. That seems
> very reasonable to me.
>
Ad-hoc isn't really sensible for such an important thing. We have done this
before, so it's not lack of prior art either.

In every past similar situation it has been the consensus that the board
does not decide on technical matters. They may help, organise, spend
resources, gather information, build tools, but the ultimate decision is up
to the community (whatever that means).

So far, the harder technical decisions (for example, migrating to Github),
have been taken after enough consensus was built in the list and enough
discussions happened in the conferences, until such a day the vast majority
agreed it should be done.

There are three main pending issues:
 * Bugzilla, where everyone thinks we have to change but GH issues are
nowhere near complete enough.
 * Phabricator, where we're mostly in favour of GH PRs, but there's
still
at least one major hurdle, patch sets.
 * Mailing list, where it's a pretty even split, with the IRC/Discord split
being a major counter-example.

Hosting on github vs self-hosted was a small change, and most people were
in favour, but the problem was mostly around monorepo vs submodules.

Starting a discord channel is not something people need "permission",
but
it did fragment the just-in-time interactions. Starting a Slack channel or
whatever is the new thing would be the same problem, but nothing too
terrible.

However, code review, technical discussions and bug tracking are pretty
core to how we all interact, and we should not have more than one of any of
those things. so, whatever decision is taken it will be a decision to
*move*, not add.

This is a pretty serious decision, and I believe we'd have a lot less
friction if we do in the same way we did the Github. Proposals,
discussions, BoF sessions and a final decision when it's clear that the
majority of the community is on board with the changes.

But to get there, we'll need to hash out all issues. Right now, the
discussion is around patch sets, and until that gets sorted, we really
shouldn't even try to use PRs. It may take less then 30 days, it may take
more, but that discussion must happen in the list, not in a working-group
or in the foundation board's meeting.

This is how we've always done it so far and it has been working well. At
least most people I know think that this is better than most other
alternatives, including ad-hoc decision making plans.

cheers,
--renato
>
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