Re: Insights for future development from the Guix Survey

[45mg]

Hi jbranso,

jbranso@dismail.de writes:

>> In general, the current work-flow and ethos within the team seems to favour 
>> incremental changes. Perhaps it's due to being volunteer-driven but I've 
>> seen multiple big patch-sets get to about 90% and then never make it over 
>> the line.
>> 
>> The number one reason for this, is the problem of a constrained contribution 
>> review process. I guess 'big' series will be deprioritised if it's not the 
>> reviewers specialist area.
>> 
>> Big changes need a group to work together, we have 'teams' (bit nascent) - 
>> but maybe we need some other way to highlight big changes and rally people 
>> together?
>
> Perhaps we could write a blog post? To highlight some of those things?
> Maybe we can encourage someone to look at those various patches, or
> at least have a record of cool patches that need review.
> Something like:
>
> Merging Guix's unfixed patches
>
> Guix is a significant free software project, and it has lots of really
> cool featured that are almost done.  Perhaps you would like to help us
> get these accross the finish line?
>
> - support for testing php packages:  https://issues.guix.gnu.org/67902
> - opensmtpd-service-type  (my fault it's not finished) 
> https://issues.guix.gnu.org/56046
> - new bootloader code that is not grub-specific  
> https://issues.guix.gnu.org/72457
> - package phosh ( https://issues.guix.gnu.org/44400 )
>
> blah blah blah
>
> If a blog post is a bad idea, then maybe we could add those cool patches
> to the TODO.org file?

I recently conducted a small survey on guix-devel, to get people's
opinions on sending pings to neglected patches:

https://lists.gnu.org/r/guix-devel/2025-01/msg00209.html

Of note here, there was a fair amount of interest in having a dedicated
place to send pings (eg. a separate thread or mailing-list).

I'm thinking this could help collect unreviewed work in one place so
that everyone who wants to can see it. Additionally, the fact that
someone has submitted a patch to such a thread/list would signify that
they're still ready to respond to review, send new versions, etc., which
is often not clear with patches that have simply gone silent after
months.

For an example of this, NixOS has monthly 'PRs ready for review' threads
on their Discourse, where people can post theirs:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/prs-ready-for-review-december/1711