Open Stack

> I will follow up with a more detailed email about what I believe we are
> missing, once the FF settles and I have applied some soothing creme to
> my burnout wounds, but currently my sentiment is:
> 
> Contributing features to Nova nowadays SUCKS!!1 (even as a core
> reviewer) We _have_ to change that!

I think this is *very* important.

<rant>
For instance, I have/had two patch series
up. One is of length 2 and is relatively small.  It's basically sitting there
with one "+2" on each patch.  I will now most likely have to apply for a FFE
to get it merged, not because there's more changes to be made before it can get merged
(there was one small nit posted yesterday) or because it's a huge patch that needs a lot
of time to review, but because it just took a while to get reviewed by cores,
and still only appears to have been looked at by one core.

For the other patch series (which is admittedly much bigger), it was hard just to
get reviews (and it was something where I actually *really* wanted several opinions,
because the patch series touched a couple of things in a very significant way).

Now, this is not my first contribution to OpenStack, or to Nova, for that matter.  I
know things don't always get in.  It's frustrating, however, when it seems like the
reason something didn't get in wasn't because it was fundamentally flawed, but instead
because it didn't get reviews until it was too late to actually take that feedback into
account, or because it just didn't get much attention review-wise at all.  If I were a
new contributor to Nova who had successfully gotten a major blueprint approved and
the implemented, only to see it get rejected like this, I might get turned off of Nova,
and go to work on one of the other OpenStack projects that seemed to move a bit faster.
</rant>

So, it's silly to rant without actually providing any ideas on how to fix it.
One suggestion would be, for each approved blueprint, to have one or two cores
explicitly marked as being responsible for providing at least some feedback on
that patch.  This proposal has issues, since we have a lot of blueprints and only
twenty cores, who also have their own stuff to work on.  However, I think the
general idea of having "guaranteed" reviewers is not unsound by itself.  Perhaps
we should have a loose tier of reviewers between "core" and "everybody else".
These reviewers would be known good reviewers who would follow the implementation
of particular blueprints if a core did not have the time.  Then, when those reviewers
gave the "+1" to all the patches in a series, they could ping a core, who could feel
more comfortable giving a "+2" without doing a deep inspection of the code.

That's just one suggestion, though.  Whatever the solution may be, this is a
problem that we need to fix.  While I enjoyed going through the blueprint process
this cycle (not sarcastic -- I actually enjoyed the whole "structured feedback" thing),
the follow up to that was not the most pleasant.

One final note: the specs referenced above didn't get approved until Spec Freeze, which
seemed to leave me with less time to implement things.  In fact, it seemed that a lot
of specs didn't get approved until spec freeze.  Perhaps if we had more staggered
approval of specs, we'd have more staggered submission of patches, and thus less of a
sudden influx of patches in the couple weeks before feature proposal freeze.

Best Regards,
Solly Ross

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Nikola Đipanov" <ndipanov at redhat.com>
> To: openstack-dev at lists.openstack.org
> Sent: Wednesday, September 3, 2014 5:50:09 AM
> Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [Nova] Feature Freeze Exception process for Juno
> 
> On 09/02/2014 09:23 PM, Michael Still wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 1:40 PM, Nikola Đipanov <ndipanov at redhat.com> wrote:
> >> On 09/02/2014 08:16 PM, Michael Still wrote:
> >>> Hi.
> >>>
> >>> We're soon to hit feature freeze, as discussed in Thierry's recent
> >>> email. I'd like to outline the process for requesting a freeze
> >>> exception:
> >>>
> >>>     * your code must already be up for review
> >>>     * your blueprint must have an approved spec
> >>>     * you need three (3) sponsoring cores for an exception to be granted
> >>
> >> Can core reviewers who have features up for review have this number
> >> lowered to two (2) sponsoring cores, as they in reality then need four
> >> (4) cores (since they themselves are one (1) core but cannot really
> >> vote) making it an order of magnitude more difficult for them to hit
> >> this checkbox?
> > 
> > That's a lot of numbers in that there paragraph.
> > 
> > Let me re-phrase your question... Can a core sponsor an exception they
> > themselves propose? I don't have a problem with someone doing that,
> > but you need to remember that does reduce the number of people who
> > have agreed to review the code for that exception.
> > 
> 
> Michael has correctly picked up on a hint of snark in my email, so let
> me explain where I was going with that:
> 
> The reason many features including my own may not make the FF is not
> because there was not enough buy in from the core team (let's be
> completely honest - I have 3+ other core members working for the same
> company that are by nature of things easier to convince), but because of
> any of the following:
> 
> * Crippling technical debt in some of the key parts of the code
> * that we have not been acknowledging as such for a long time
> * which leads to proposed code being arbitrarily delayed once it makes
> the glaring flaws in the underlying infra apparent
> * and that specs process has been completely and utterly useless in
> helping uncover (not that process itself is useless, it is very useful
> for other things)
> 
> I am almost positive we can turn this rather dire situation around
> easily in a matter of months, but we need to start doing it! It will not
> happen through pinning arbitrary numbers to arbitrary processes.
> 
> I will follow up with a more detailed email about what I believe we are
> missing, once the FF settles and I have applied some soothing creme to
> my burnout wounds, but currently my sentiment is:
> 
> Contributing features to Nova nowadays SUCKS!!1 (even as a core
> reviewer) We _have_ to change that!
> 
> N.
> 
> > Michael
> > 
> >>>     * exceptions must be granted before midnight, Friday this week
> >>> (September 5) UTC
> >>>     * the exception is valid until midnight Friday next week
> >>> (September 12) UTC when all exceptions expire
> >>>
> >>> For reference, our rc1 drops on approximately 25 September, so the
> >>> exception period needs to be short to maximise stabilization time.
> >>>
> >>> John Garbutt and I will both be granting exceptions, to maximise our
> >>> timezone coverage. We will grant exceptions as they come in and gather
> >>> the required number of cores, although I have also carved some time
> >>> out in the nova IRC meeting this week for people to discuss specific
> >>> exception requests.
> >>>
> >>> Michael
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> OpenStack-dev mailing list
> >> OpenStack-dev at lists.openstack.org
> >> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
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