Re: Bottleneck problem to merge Python patches

[John Snow <jsnow@redhat.com>]

On 9/19/20 7:17 AM, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé wrote:
> Hi Aleksandar,
> 
> (extending the Cc list to broader audience)
> 
> On 9/18/20 10:33 PM, Aleksandar Markovic wrote:
>>
>> On Friday, August 28, 2020, Ahmed Karaman <ahmedkhaledkaraman@gmail.com
>> <mailto:ahmedkhaledkaraman@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>      - Apply pylint and flake8 formatting rules to the script.
>>      - Use 'tempfile' instead of '/tmp' for creating temporary files.
>>
>>      ---
>>
>> Hello, folks.
>>
>> This series seems forgotten. Can some of you perhaps take a look,
>> review, and possibly integrate some patches in a pull request?
>>
>> Ahmed invested quite of time to improve the functionality and quality of
>> scripts, and they are truly useful for developers interested in
>> performance measurement.
> 

Hi, I will add it to my queue. I intended to take over Python 
maintenance but I have been busy refactoring the QAPI python code and 
haven't been reading my mail as regularly.

> The Python patches are indeed being merged slowly, but are not
> forgotten :) Eduardo sent just a pull request *yesterday* for
> patches he had queued *before* QEMU 5.1, that is more than 1 year
> ago!
> https://www.mail-archive.com/qemu-devel@nongnu.org/msg742228.html
> 
> I hope he will be able to process the other Python patches sent
> the last 12 months. He raised the problem few month ago saying he
> was overwhelmed and was looking for help from the community.
> Cleber helped a pair of times, I helped once, but then nobody
> popped up volunteering.
> 
> I agree this is a community problem, nobody wants to become the
> de-facto Python maintainer. Current maintainers are already busy
> solving problem with low-level languages such C.
> As a project, QEMU is evolving, using more and more Python, switched
> to Meson, we might have Rust code too. Learning that for current
> maintainers takes time. I guess we lack new contributors/maintainers
> with interest in Python & QEMU.
> 

I'm volunteering, since I am doing so much work in Python. I could use a 
dedicated reviewer to help me, however. I prefer a maintainer policy 
where all patches get at least ONE review by someone other than the 
primary author.

In the case that I am writing so much Python, I still need a 
co-maintainer to help review *my* patches.

> This is my simple/rough analysis, as John had the same problem
> 2/3 months ago, his patches were on the list unreviewed for various
> weeks. Same problem with Avocado patches, Lukas sent a series a bit
> before Ahmed and it is still unreviewed:
> https://www.mail-archive.com/qemu-devel@nongnu.org/msg737272.html
> 
> Alex Bennée recently said:
> 
>   "review time is the currency of qemu-devel ;-)"
> 
> We might be failing at explaining new contributors the importance
> of peer-review, as this helps a lot maintainers. It is described
> in the wiki but maybe new contributors don't read it, we don't
> remember them to:
> https://wiki.qemu.org/Contribute/SubmitAPatch#Participating_in_Code_Review
> and:
> https://wiki.qemu.org/Contribute/SubmitAPatch#Return_the_favor
> 
> My 2 cents...
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Phil.
> 
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Aleksandar
>