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

[Maor Lipchuk]

On 03/11/2014 05:20 PM, Itamar Heim wrote:
> On 03/11/2014 05:14 PM, Eyal Edri wrote:
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Itamar Heim" <iheim at redhat.com>
>>> To: "Eyal Edri" <eedri at redhat.com>, "Tomasz Kołek"
>>> <tomasz-kolek at o2.pl>, users at ovirt.org, "infra" <infra at ovirt.org>
>>> Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2014 5:10:54 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [Users] [GSOC][Gerrit] add potential reviewers - questions
>>>
>>> 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?
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Users mailing list
>>>> Users at ovirt.org
>>>> http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users
>>>>
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>
>> won't it require maintaining static lists of people per
>> file/path/project?
>>
> 
> yes, but considering our project layout, i don't see an alternative.
> (some of the layout could be improved to be path based, rather than file
> based)
I think it could be done automatically by analysing the file and see who
mostly changed it recently, since the "owner" of the file might be
dynamic, who ever changed most of it few days ago might be more familiar
with it today

IMO the algorithm of adding the reviewers should be flexible.
For example, using a folder which will contain files, where each file
implement an algorithm to add the reviewers.

for instance we can have two files:
1. Add a reviewers by blame - the contributor which changed recently the
code lines
2. Add a reviewers by file - the contributor who changed most of the
file recently.

Each file will implement the functional operation and will output the
reviewers emails.

The user can then add a new algorithm or change it to be more specific
to its project.
for example the user can add also the maintainers which acked the patch
that was blamed.
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