Refactoring the Review Process

["Darrick J. Wong" <darrick.wong@oracle.com>]

Hi everyone,

Writing and reviewing code in isolation hasn't always served me well.  I
really enjoyed my experiences developing the reflink code (~2015) being
able to chat with Dave in the evenings about the design of particular
algorithms, or how certain XFS structures really worked, and to learn
the history behind this and that subsystem.

Returning to first principles, I perceive that the purpose of our review
processes is to make sure there aren't any obvious design flaws or
implementation errors in the code we put back to the git repo by
ensuring that at least one other XFS developer actually understands
what's going on.

In other words, I am interested in testing the pair programming
paradigm.  Given that we have zero physical locality, I suspect this
will work better with an interactive medium and between people who are
in nearby time zones.  I also suspect that this might be better used for
more focussed activities such as code walkthroughs and reviews.  Still,
I'm willing to entertain the possibility of using this as a second means
to get a patchset to a Reviewed-by.

I also speculate that this might be a good mentoring opportunity for us
to trade productivity tips and disseminate 'institutional' knowledge
between people.  I for one am happy to help others learn more about the
code base in exchange for learning more about the parts of XFS with
which I'm less familiar.  (I bet Allison knows more about how xattrs
work than I do at this point...)

--D