Open Stack

On 28 July 2014 11:37, Salvatore Orlando <sorlando at nicira.com> wrote:

> Therefore the likeness of your patch merging depends on the specific
> nature of the -1 you received.
>

This is really a key point.

Here is a pattern that's worth recognising:

If your code is in reasonable shape but there is no urgent need to complete
the merge then the reviewer might "praise with faint damnation". That is,
keep giving you -1 reviews for minor reasons until closer to the end of the
merge window.

If you are an overzealous newbie you might think you need to respond to
every such comment with an immediate revision, and that you might then be
rewarded with a +1, but then you would just be waving a dead chicken [0]
and better advised to slow down a little. (Says me who went through 19
patch sets on his first small contribution :-)).

I would hope that new contributors won't feel too much pressure to look
busy. This can be a tough call when your job is to take all reasonable
steps to have code accepted. It's one thing to be overzealous about
answering nitpick reviews but it would be really unfortunate if you felt
that you always needed to (extreme example) have an agenda item in all
relevant weekly meetings e.g. NFV + Nova + Neutron + ML2 + Third party.

In any case the whole process probably goes much more smoothly once you
have a chance to attend a Summit and make some friends. That might not be
bad as a first step for new contributors if they have that possibility.
(But then the Summit is very expensive until after your first commit is
merged and you are recognised as a contributor.)

[0]: http://zvon.org/comp/r/ref-Jargon_file.html#Terms~wave_a_dead_chicken
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