[Users] [GSOC][Gerrit] add potential reviewers - questions

[Itamar Heim]

On 03/11/2014 05:06 PM, Ewoud Kohl van Wijngaarden wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 10:37:22AM -0400, Eyal Edri wrote:
>>> Tomasz Kołek wrote:
>>>
>>> I've got a few questions about project description.
>>> Please tell me if my problem's understanding is good or not.
>>> We need to add a few flags/methods to git review module. This flags should
>>> allow to add potential reviewers in gerrit.
>>> So:
>>> Let's assume that we've got special flags for this operations. What's next?
>>> 1. In gerrit system we need to add special place for potential reviewers?
>>> 2. Potential reviewers should agree that they want to review?
>>> 3. We can have more than one accepted reviewer?
>>
>> I'm not sure i understood exactly what you mean by 'potential
>> reviewers'.  do want gerrit (hook?) to automatically add reviewers to
>> a patch according to the code sent?  so in fact you'll have a place
>> somewhere for mapping code & specific developers?
>
> I really like this idea. Gerrit currently requires new users to know who
> to add as reviewers, IMHO impeding new contributors.
>
> One relative simple solution would be to look at who recently touched
> the files that are being modified and add them as reviewers. This can be
> done by looking at the git log for a file. Some pseudo python code
> solution:
>
> reviewers = set()
>
> for modified_file in commit.files:
>      reviewers += set(commit.author for commit in git.log(modified_file))
>
> return reviewers
>
> This gives a system that those who touche a file, become the maintainer
> for that file. A more complex solution could improve on that and limit
> the reviewers added per patch. One can think of limiting to only
> contributions in the last X months, weigh contributions so common
> committers are prefered. It could also combine several methods.
>
> For example to limit to the 5 authors who touched the most files:
>
> reviewers = collections.Counter()  # New in python 2.7
>
> for modified_file in commit.files:
>      reviewers += collections.Counter(commit.author for commit in git.log(modified_file))
>
> return [author for author, count in reviewers.most_common(5)]
>
> Since Counter also accepts a dictionary, one could also weigh the
> touched lines per file. Downside there is big whitespace/formatting
> patches can skew the line count.
>
> In short, I think an entire thesis could be written on the optimal way
> to determine reviewers but a simple algorithm could do to show the
> method works.
>
> Does this help?
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I think if we do this, we want to make sure we cover per file who is 
required to +2 it before we consider it acked.