[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Old patches

[Gregory Berkolaiko <Gregory.Berkolaiko@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 24 Aug 2003, Josh Cogliati wrote:

> I am amazed at how many of these old patches seem to have been dropped without
> comment.  

I understand your frustration.  Unfortunately, the maintainers have 
limited time.  They are also keen to push _their_ projects forward, which 
is understandable.  And they also have to hunt down bugs.

Some improvement can be achieved through "peer review".  This involves a 
member of the community taking a patch and 
(a) testing it 
(b) looking for bugs and style mistakes
(c) reporting on it on the list

One can either grab a patch when he sees it, but, unfortunately, this 
doesn't guarantee that the patch will go in after the review, especially 
if this patch add a feature or, god forbid, changes rules.

Thus a better system would be when maintainers ask people to review 
patches they are ready to commit in principle.  This would involve 
maintainers having a list of people with
(1) names / emails
(2) areas of expertise (e.g. path finding for me)
(3) areas of interest  (e.g. gen. topology for me)

So please treat this email as a call to volunteer to join the Reviewers 
Club.  Send your emails either to the list or to me directly.

There are rewards too: by providing good and careful reviews you 
build a reputation which will help your own code to be trusted.


Review others as you would have them review you!

Best wishes,
G.