What is the problem with ports PR reaction delays?

[Big Lebowski]

On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 12:41 AM, John Marino <freebsd.contact at marino.st>wrote:

> On 1/25/2014 00:30, Big Lebowski wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > I wanted to ask about the growing time of reaction to ports PR's - what
> is
> > the problem? It seems to me, as a ports contributor, that this time is
> only
> > growing, not shrinking, and there's no formal/automated procedures that
> > would help in managing the issue.
> >
> > What is the problem?
>
> Seriously?  You did all that research and didn't notice this?
> query all open ports PRS: 1705 problems total.
>
> Short answer: Sheer number of PRs.
>

I did, in fact, and this is not the problem, this is the symptom of the
problem.


>
> > Isnt there enought commiters?
>
> Well, at least there are more PRs than people closing PRs.  Not all
> committers deal with PRs.  Getting a commit bit does not obligate you to
> process PRs.  If there's a PR already on a port a committer has interest
> in fixing, then he/she will probably process the PR while they are there.
>
> >  Isnt there a automated
> > PR handling procedure reminding commiters with relevant access about such
> > submissions? Can we help? I hope to spark some discussion.
>
> Of course there is.  People get reminded about assigned PRs constantly.
>  You think a computer message will make somebody work faster if they
> didn't forget about it (iow they are aware and actively decided not to
> deal with it yet).
>
> I would have thought the situation is kind of obvious.  There are lots
> of PRs, nobody is paid to process them, there are no teams dedicated to
> "new ports"


Perhaps there could be? Or some commiters who would assess if the PR can be
handled easily or it needs a more experienced eye to look at it?


> , lots of PRs are stuck because their non-freebsd.org
> maintainers are MIA or abandoned their emails and nobody is going to
>

Shouldnt those be invalidated and closed to reduce the workload illusion
that tends to set off people from doing work?


> touch a PR in "feedback", etc, etc.  Finally, some committers are pretty
> sloppy at closing complete/obsolete PRs.
>
> When people get paid to do it, I think the situation will improve. :)
>

Great, then perhaps FreeBSD deserves dedicated, paid commiter to handle
that situation? After all, we're donating money to the project, and if
there's general consensus this is a problem that needs to be fixed and this
is the only way to do it, then perhaps something can be done about it?


>
> John
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