[heat] Addressing the large patch backlog.

David Peacock dpeacock at redhat.com
Tue Nov 12 17:21:03 UTC 2019


Hi all,

For those interested in the workings of the Heat project, I'd like to kick
off a call to action.

At the time of writing there are approximately 200 open patches against the
core Heat project repo alone, not counting the other Heat repos.  Recently
I started going through and triaging the patches I'd consider "historical"
with an arbitrary cut off for this definition of August 1st of this year.

There are 148 patches which meet this definition, dating all the way back
to 2015.  I have gone through them all and placed them into a spreadsheet
[0] which I'd invite you all to check.  Provided is a link to the patch in
question, initial upload date, last meaningful update date, primary author,
and a high level summary of the patch.

Additionally I've broken the patches down into three recommended states
based on a high level first pass.

*Abandon*

34 patches are candidates to be abandoned; they usually are of
debatable utility, have significant outstanding concerns, or have no
followup from the original developer in a very long time.  In many cases,
all of these conditions.  *Without good reason or explanation from the
original developer, these patches may ultimately be cleared out.*

*Rebase + Merge*

38 patches are with a high level look in reasonably good shape, perform a
stated goal, and may be trivial to core review and ultimately rebase and
merge.  *If you're the original developer or otherwise interested in these
patches and wish to see them through the merge process, please rebase the
patch.*

*Research*

76 patches are sufficiently complex that they'll need a much closer look.
Some of these patches are in a seemingly "finished" state, some are a way
off.  Some have unanswered concerns from core review and have been left
dangling.  *If you're the original developer or otherwise interested in
working these patches through to completion, please do get involved.*

When I started this little mission I wasn't quite sure what to expect.
What I have found is that as much as there was anticipated cruft to clear
out, there is a great deal of very good work lurking here, waiting to see
the light of day, and it would be so good to see this work realised.  :-)

If you have anything to say, feel free to write back on list, and if you'd
like to coordinate with me any efforts with these patches I can be found by
email or on Freenode in the #heat channel; I'm dpeacock.

Based on feedback of this idea, and indeed on each individual patch, I hope
we can get this backlog under control, and harvest some of this excellent
code!

Thank you,
David Peacock

[0] https://ethercalc.openstack.org/b3qtqyhkg9g1 Please be mindful of
accidental edits.
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