[vtk-developers] VTK code review / testing / integration workflow

Tue Aug 26 12:52:40 EDT 2014

I wanted to comment that your gerrit work flow is great. I like the 
organization by topic branches and that dashboard runs are automatically 
triggered on new pushes. Also the reviews by folks on your side have 
been very helpful in improving the submitted code. It would be nice to 
see a diff between successive review/recommit iterations.

I don't know how much the work flow is turning off new developers, a 
knee jerk reaction is that it feels like overkill, but all of the things 
that you ask folks to do make a lot of sense and help keep VTK solid. It 
sure is rewarding to see how solid VTK is and see it's continual 
improvement and to be a part of that! As a developer the high quality of 
the resulting product outs weigh my desire to work with fun tools.

I recently made some commits to a KDE component project. Their workflow 
uses svn+reviewboard. The lack of topic branches made iteration 
cumbersome. Once the patches were approved merging was not as easy as it 
is in your gerrit workflow where it's done with a simple button click on 
a web page.

I would think that modernization is more of an issue in attracting 
developers. Ancient OpenGL infrastructure is a really big one. Things 
like having to use SafeDownCast instead of dynamic_cast and the other 
baggage of supporting ancient compilers are also a big turnoff. A full 
c++11 port would be very exciting. All these are things you are working 
on but are harder and take longer to change...

On 08/25/2014 04:47 PM, Berk Geveci wrote:
> Hi Bill,
>
> The goal is not to have more process. It is to implement a workflow 
> with fun-to-use tools such that we can continue to attract developers 
> to VTK. VTK development is lively. We have done a lot of great stuff 
> last year, both new development and maintenance, and we have great 
> things coming next year.
>
> In my humble opinion, what we are doing poorly is attracting new 
> developers. I think toolchain and workflow play a role in this. Not 
> communicating well is another part. I'd like to attract more people to 
> contribute code and more people to do reviews. Also, our bug tracker 
> is collecting dust. Lots of bug reports are going in but it gets very 
> little attention. I can't even remember when I looked at it last.
>
> Here are some statistics from openhub.net <http://openhub.net> 
> (website formerly known as ohloh):
>
> VTK:
>
> 30 Day Summary
> Jul 21 2014 --- Aug 20 2014
> 152 Commits
> 19 Contributors
>
> 12 Month Summary
> Aug 20 2013 --- Aug 20 2014
> 2393 Commits
> Down -965 (28%) from previous 12 months
> 64 Contributors
> Down -6 (8%) from previous 12 months
>
> Still a lot of commits but going down.
>
> So I'd like to see us slowly migrating towards tools that are more 
> attractive and facilitate collaboration with the larger community.
>
> Frankly, I believe that our current set of tools get in the way. First 
> of all, they all require creating accounts to do anything. An account 
> for bug tracker, another for Gerrit, another for Wiki, another 2 for 
> the mailing lists. We should have presence where people already hang 
> out and don't have to create new accounts. Github, stackoverflow, 
> Google+ etc. Second of all, they are all clunky at best. Usability 
> does matter to people. Finally, there are a lot new resources 
> available out there and we are not tapping into it as best as we can. 
> We should be using Travis and Jenkins in addition to CDash and CDash @ 
> Home for example.
>
> So I don't think that this conversation is overkill. These discussions 
> have a natural tendency to go on forever, I agree. So let's try to 
> keep to the point and make some decisions soon.
>
> Best,
> -berk
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 4:54 PM, Bill Lorensen 
> <bill.lorensen at gmail.com <mailto:bill.lorensen at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     BTW the new gerrit UI is a bit prettier:
>     https://android-review.googlesource.com/#/q/status:open
>
>     I'm a little concerned that we spend too much time on process and not
>     enough time on improving VTK. But, I'll go with the consensus of the
>     people who still work for a living. If the new process is too
>     difficult for an old guy like me, I'll just spend my extra time with
>     ITK.
>
>     Bill
>
>
>     On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 4:45 PM, Sean McBride
>     <sean at rogue-research.com <mailto:sean at rogue-research.com>> wrote:
>     > On Mon, 25 Aug 2014 15:50:59 -0400, David Cole via
>     vtk-developers said:
>     >
>     >>A fantasy feature for me would be that the system injects a step
>     >>1.5/2.5 in the developer workflow, and automatically chooses 3-5
>     >>reviewers for you based on reviewers "signing up" for reviewing
>     certain
>     >>modules, or perhaps based on recent-ish commits in the same files...
>     >
>     > That would be a great addition.  I often don't know who to add
>     as a reviewer, and I've been tinkering with VTK for years. 
>     Imagine a newbie!  A person can use 'git log' and 'git blame' to
>     get some guesses, and that could be automated.  Of course,
>     sometimes that results in suggesting someone no longer involved
>     with VTK or the infamous 'VTK developers', but still it would help
>     to automate it.
>     >
>     > Cheers,
>     >
>     > --
>     > ____________________________________________________________
>     > Sean McBride, B. Eng sean at rogue-research.com
>     <mailto:sean at rogue-research.com>
>     > Rogue Research www.rogue-research.com
>     <http://www.rogue-research.com>
>     > Mac Software Developer              Montréal, Québec, Canada
>     >
>     >
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>     --
>     Unpaid intern in BillsBasement at noware dot com
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>
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