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

From: Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 4, 2020, 14:32 UTC
Message-ID: <CAP8UFD0V+=tq8CGFk_Mz+N=HjRtkhkMbX9Cy2-=WfHL8wrj6=Q@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CABPp-BH=SqT5v=CnuPm+6Sqy+1tP=72Wx_oCKs+DxJcdKzwgFA@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 11:20 AM Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com> wrote:

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

> Now, it's possible these regressions could just be a reflection of the
> fact that I'm focusing more on fixing inconsistent behaviors

I agree with that. It's very difficult to implement big changes like changing the rebase backend without any regression at all.

Show 6 quoted lines

> 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.

It's possible to add more tests, but it's not possible to test everything and it's hard to know it the tests we add are effective at avoiding regressions. Not sure we can do much better.

Show 5 quoted lines

> 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.

Great! At GitLab we are slowly moving toward something like that, but not there yet.

Show 5 quoted lines

> (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).

That's a good idea.

Now to go back to Junio's question:

Show 6 quoted lines

> ... 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?

Yeah, I agree that increasing the number of early adopters could be the best way to avoid regressions report just after the release.

Maybe we could just ask people to test rc releases or 'master' in Git Rev News? It might work better if someone wrote a small article about what is coming in the next release before asking to test. Then there is the issue of making it easier to build Git and to understand and fix build issues. We could also perhaps coordinate Git Rev News editions and Git releases, so that the editions are published for example between rc-1 and rc-2 releases.

Best, Christian.