Re: [PATCH v4] fast-(import|export): improve on commit signature output format

From: Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 8, 2025, 10:17 UTC
Message-ID: <CAP8UFD3ZitsRz3ccAjmB_k+DhdYw+AJgf-2vPCGUaRAgWd9SEA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqwm8jxoj3.fsf@gitster.g>

On Tue, Jul 8, 2025 at 7:03 AM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

>
> Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > On Tue, Jul 8, 2025 at 12:58 AM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

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> >> We haven't heard much after a few comments were posted on this
> >> latest round, since Elijah's
> >> <20250619133630.727274-1-christian.couder@gmail.com>; I understand
> >> that it would be the author's turn to respond (the response does not
> >> necessarily have to be with an updated iteration).  If so, let me
> >> mark the topic as Stalled in the draft of the latest issue of the
> >> "What's cooking" report.
> >
> > I will hopefully send a v5 later today.

I just sent it and replied to the pending reviews about v4.

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> Thanks.
>
> By the way, I noticed that you often do not respond to reviews until
> the last minute, at the same time as when you send your next
> iteration, or even soon after doing so.

Yeah, right.

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> That is quite different from how other contributors operate, i.e.
> respond and engage in discussions triggered by the reviews, and
> after people involved in discussion got an (even rough) idea of what
> the right next step would be, if not a total consensus, send the
> next iteration.
>
> I do not know which style is more efficient form of cooperation, but
> it somewhat makes my job harder, if I do not hear much _heartbeats_
> after I see review comments on the list.  I do not mind waiting for
> seeing the next round for quite a while---after all, any substantial
> (re)work takes time.  And responding to reviews may need thinking
> things through carefully, which may take some time, so I would not
> demand an immediate response, either.  But it would be nearly
> impossible to feel the current status of such a topic---a few review
> comments are seen, the author goes silent for a while, we cannot
> tell if the author is working on a new iteration or where the author
> and reviewers agree and disagree.

Sorry if it makes your job harder.

When I work on a number of different things, I alternate between topics. Just after I send a new version of some series to the mailing list, I usually start working on a different topic. These days for example I alternate between this topic and the promisor-remote capability topic. So it seems to me that if I were to respond to reviews right away, I could be switching topics all the time if there are discussions happening on several topics I work on.

I know I still have to switch often anyway between topics because I might be pinged internally at GitLab about some issues or because someone I mentor asks me a question privately, etc. And maybe for you or others switching topics often is not an issue, but when topics are quite complex I feel it makes it much harder for me to focus on what I am doing. I don't think I am the only one in this case by the way.

> Also a review response that comes at the same time or immediately
> after a new iteration is already sent out makes it look like the
> author is refusing to continue discussion and reviewers are not
> welcome to make follow-up suggestions during such a discussion.

Sorry if it looks like this. I am not refusing any discussion or follow up suggestions. As you say above, responding to reviews may need thinking and often working to try things out, and often it seems to me that I cannot really reply properly if I haven't worked enough to try some ideas.

Let me take for example the v5 I just sent. It's only by researching and trying different ideas without knowing if they would work that I found (after a long time) a way to write a proper test with both a SHA-1 and a SHA-256 signature on the same commit. It was the same for using "$GIT_DEFAULT_HASH" instead of "sha(1|256)" in the tests.

So yeah, I could have replied early with "I will do it in v5." or "I will try to do it in v5." or "Ok" or "I will think about it." to most suggestions I got, but what would have really been the value of a response with mostly those kinds of sentences in it?

> Instead, the next iteration comes as a fait accompli,

Even if I had replied with mostly "I will do it in v5." or "I will try to do it in v5.", etc, to many suggestions, I could still have found or decided for some reasons to actually implement something else and use those reasons to justify it. Would it have been less of a fait accompli?

> and makes it
> less useful to continue the review discussion on the previous round
> by responding to such a late response.

In my opinion the discussion can continue with more useful and higher quality information, as I have worked significantly to think through and try to implement the suggestions that were made or to research and then often implement other solutions. Yeah, it doesn't continue on the previous round, but hopefully the new round is better, so ...