Re: [PATCH 1/3] [Outreachy] t3903-stash: test without configured user name

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 25, 2018, 04:44 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqy3amk53s.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <45cf8bf9-adfa-655e-0ded-fdb71707f7ad@gmail.com>

Slavica <slavicadj.ip2018@gmail.com> writes:

Show 20 quoted lines

> On 23-Oct-18 8:52 PM, Christian Couder wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 6:35 PM Slavica <slavicadj.ip2018@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> This is part of enhancement request that ask for `git stash` to work even if `user.name` is not configured.
>>> The issue is discussed here: https://public-inbox.org/git/87o9debty4.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com/T/#u.
>> We prefer commit messages that contain as much as possible all the
>> information necessary to understand the patch without links to other
>> places.
>>
>> It seems that only this email from you reached me. Did you send other
>> emails for patches 2/3 and 3/3?
>>
>> [...]
>
> Okay, I will change that. This is my first patch and I am still adapting.
>
> Emails for patches 2/3 and 3/3 because aren't there because I am still
> preparing them.
>
> (I didn't know if I had 3 patches in plan that they should be sent at
> almost the same time.)

It is more efficient for everybody involved.

 - You may discover that 1/3 you just (thought) finished was not
   sufficient while working on 2/3 and 3/3, and by the time you are
   pretty close to finishing 2/3 and 3/3, you may want to update 1/3
   in a big way.  Sending a premature version and having others to
   review is wasting everbody's time.

 - Your 1/3 might become perfect alone with help from others'
   reviews and your updates, but after that everybody may forget
   about it when you are ready to send out 2/3 and 3/3; if these
   three are truly related patches in a single topic, you would want
   to have what 1/3 did fresh in your reviewers' minds.  You'd have
   to find the old message of 1/3 and make 2/3 and 3/3 responses to
   it to keep them properly threaded (which may take your time), and
   reviewers need to refresh their memory by going back to 1/3
   before reviewing 2/3 and 3/3

One thing I learned twice while working in this project is that open source development is not a race to produce and show your product as quickly as possible.

When I was an individual contributor, the project was young and there were many people with good and competing ideas working to achieve more-or-less the same goal. It felt like a competition to get *MY* version of the vision, design and implementation over others' adopted and one way to stay in the competition was to send things as quickly as possible. I didn't know better, and I think I ended up wasting many people's time that way.

That changed when I became the maintainer, as (1) I no longer had to race with anybody ;-), and (2) I introduced the 'pu' (proposed update) system so that anything that was queued early can be discarded and replaced when a better thing come within a reasonable timeframe.

And then I re-learned the same "this is not a race" lesson a couple of years ago, when I started working in a timezone several hours away from the most active participants for a few months at a time. I do not have to respond to a message I see on the list immediately, as it is too late to catch the sender who is already in bed ;-)

So take your time and make sure what you are sending out can be reviewed the most efficiently. Completing 2/3 and 3/3 before sending 1/3 out to avoid having to redo 1/3 and avoid having reviewers to spend their time piecemeal is one thing. Making sure that the patch does not have style issues that distract reviewers' attention is another.

Sitting on what you think you have completed for a few days allows you to review your product with fresh eyes before sending them out, which is another benefit of trying not to rush.