Re: What's cooking in git.git (Jun 2020, #01; Wed, 3)

From: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 4, 2020, 08:14 UTC
Message-ID: <CABPp-BH=SqT5v=CnuPm+6Sqy+1tP=72Wx_oCKs+DxJcdKzwgFA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqlfl3rhl0.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>

Hi,

On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 2:01 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> Seeing a handful of regression reports [*] immediately after a
> feature release is made gives me a mixed feeling: people are eager
> enough to help by reporting issues they encounter, but there are not
> enough people who are eager enough to help by testing the tip of
> 'master' before the release.  Are there things we can do to help
> them become early adopters so that they do not have to scramble
> after the release?

That's very diplomatically worded, but perhaps let me peel back that deflection layer a bit and be more direct...

A disproportionate number of regressions that we've had in recent releases have traced back to me. 2 of the 3 regressions from 2.27 do. In the 2.26 release, we had a whole pile of regressions with rebase due to the change in the default backend, which came from me. And, we've also had a bunch of "fun" with dir.c in _every_ _single_ _release_ (to the best of my memory anyway) since I got my foot caught in that unrelenting trap[1], including 1 of the 3 reported regressions in this latest release. The regression reports after releases have been weighing on me too; I was thinking about it a fair bit last week as well as this week.

[1] https://kernel.googlesource.com/pub/scm/git/git/+/8d92fb292706fd8d13cfe55353b2ec9345153a3e

Now, it's possible these regressions could just be a reflection of the fact that I'm focusing more on fixing inconsistent behaviors rather than adding new features, which is a type of work where it's much harder to avoid fallout and reported issues. But it's also quite possible that I'm going about these cleanups wrong or at least suboptimally. I'm open for suggestions of what I should change, or even experiments to try.

Recent attempts I've made to make things better: (1) I have in the past month or so gotten a company internal distribution of git started, with a growing number of users. This distribution uses pre-release versions of git, mostly off master so far though I'm considering moving to 'next' for it. (2) I pushed hard during 2.27 for the dir.c changes to either merge early in that cycle or wait until early in the 2.28 cycle -- hoping that an early merge would give more time for testing. (This was an attempt to learn from the 2.26 rebase issues, since that merged late in the 2.26 cycle).

Any other ideas I should try?

Thanks, Elijah