Open Stack

Looking at the current review backlog I think that we have to
seriously question whether our stable branch review process in
Nova is working to an acceptable level

On Havana

  - 43 patches pending
  - 19 patches with a single +2
  - 1 patch with a -1
  - 0 patches wit a -2
  - Stalest waiting 111 days since most recent patch upload
  - Oldest waiting 250 days since first patch upload
  - 26 patches waiting more than 1 month since most recent upload
  - 40 patches waiting more than 1 month since first upload

On Icehouse:

  - 45 patches pending
  - 17 patches with a single +2
  - 4 patches with a -1
  - 1 patch with a -2
  - Stalest waiting 84 days since most recent patch upload
  - Oldest waiting 88 days since first patch upload
  - 10 patches waiting more than 1 month since most recent upload
  - 29 patches waiting more than 1 month since first upload

I think those stats paint a pretty poor picture of our stable branch
review process, particularly Havana.

It should not take us 250 days for our review team to figure out whether
a patch is suitable material for a stable branch, nor should we have
nearly all the patches waiting more than 1 month in Havana.

These branches are not getting sufficient reviewer attention and we need
to take steps to fix that.

If I had to set a benchmark, assuming CI passes, I'd expect us to either
approve or reject submissions for stable within a 2 week window in the
common case, 1 month at the worst case.

If we are trying to throttle down the rate of change in Havana, that
totally makes sense, but we should be more active at rejecting patches
if that is our current goal, not let them hang around in limbo for
many months.

I'm actually unclear on who even has permission to approve patches
on stable branches ? Despite being in Nova core I don't have any perm
to approve patches on stable. I think it is pretty odd that we've got a
system where the supposed experts of the Nova team can't approve patches
for stable. I get that we've probably got people on stable team who are
not in core, but IMHO we should have the stable team comprising a superset
of core, not a subset.

Regards,
Daniel
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