Re: [Qemu-devel] Patch checking bot

[John Snow <jsnow@redhat.com>]

On 10/20/2014 10:08 AM, Peter Maydell wrote:
> On 20 October 2014 11:25, Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> At KVM Forum 2014 we discussed a patch checking bot that automates patch
>> format checking and smoke testing:
>>
>> 1. Did the patch submitter include Signed-off-by?
>> 2. Does checkpatch.pl pass?
>> 3. Does the patch apply to qemu.git/master?
>> 4. Does each patch compile?
>> 5. Does the series pass make check and qemu-iotests?
>>
>> Here are some thoughts on the patch checker:
>>
>> If a patch series passes successfully, no email is sent.  If a patch
>> series fails, an email with the errors is sent as a reply to the patch
>> series email thread.  The patch submitter can then respond in case there
>> are false positive (e.g. from checkpatch.pl) - the bot doesn't care
>> about replies but it tells the human reviewers and maintainers what the
>> patch submitter intends to do.
>
> Probably also worth having a feature where the cover
> letter or patch can have a "patchchecker: no" line in
> it to tell the bot to ignore something, so people can
> avoid it sending lots of mail for patch series they
> know don't apply to mainline (eg ones which depend on
> a previous series).
>
> -- PMM
>

Maybe it should still check what it can, but squelch the reply to list. 
Certain automatic checks may still be of value, even if it doesn't apply 
to master. If we have a website where we can check the bot and patch 
status, having some output might be nicer than allowing arbitrary skips.

Further, maybe the bot could be trained to check the patch series target 
to see what branch it's supposed to apply to and go from there. If 
people are good about labeling their stable patches, the bot should be 
able to check those as well.

This might help us tighten up and formalize our subject formatting 
rules, which would probably also help maintainer work-flow by allowing 
more robust automation. e.g., "Sorry, you submitted a patch, but I 
couldn't identify which branch/component you're trying to patch against!"

I believe at KVM Forum it was also mentioned that it'd be nice to have 
the bot reply to patch series where the proper maintainers were missed 
with a "Hey, I added in <so and so> who maintains <this file you 
touched>, please include it next time!"

-- 
—js