[vtk-developers] Requiring an experimental dashboard

[David Doria]

Could we require (or at least suggest) an experimental dashboard is run
before a Gerrit patch is merged, or perhaps even before a branch can be
pushed to Gerrit? Maybe this could be built into the gerrit-push and/or
gerrit-merge scripts?

Here is the current workflow:

1) A developer writes some code and pushes it to Gerrit. This is allowed
whether or not the code compiles, runs, or passes all tests.
2) The developer potentially either a) forgets to run tests at all or b)
only runs tests that he thinks are relevant to the modifications
3) Reviewers either a) assume the developer ran the right tests so they
don't run their own or b) reviewers forget to run tests or c) reviewers
also run the wrong subset of tests

The workflow I would suggest is:

1) A developer writes some code.
2) When trying to push to Gerrit, the developer is interrogated by a script
that says "Did you run an experimental dashboard? Did you run all tests (if
the dashboard was not run)? etc., etc. Ideally it would allow him to take
action from within the script, but if nothing else at least it forces him
to say "no I did not, but I want to proceed anyway".
3) The list of things that was determined to have been done is included
with the commit message or otherwise displayed on Gerrit.
4) Reviewers can review the code already knowing which measures have
already been taken to verify that the code is clean.

Ideally the 'request build' idea from the ITK Gerrit would be automatically
invoked when pushing to Gerrit, but of course it takes significant hardware
resources to support many builds. The idea of my proposition is that it
leaves the burden on the developers machine, but takes "I forgot" out of
the list of excuses why something is wrong. Taking the human element out of
it always seems like a good idea to me.

David
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