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Re: [virgo-dev] Gerrit

We're going to need some "Using Gerrit at Eclipse" resources on the wiki. Note that we don't need perfection immediately, but a good start would be useful. Might you consider starting one and adding some of the lessons you've learned to it (be sure to link it into the "Development Resources" page).

Thanks,

Wayne

On 11/23/2011 05:36 AM, Borislav Kapukaranov wrote:
My story begins a year ago. I was young git noob back then.

Just as it’s with every new thing you encounter you are eager to try it and
get to its limits. Along with git there seemed to be a number of add-ons.
Many visual tools to help you wrap your head around the swarm of branches
and, interestingly, a code review tool called Gerrit. It promised to make
your code reviews easier than ever and simplify your git experience. They
were really exciting times and I had the luck to try the full package in a
productive environment.



Nowadays I feel a little less noobier about git :-) and had close to an
year of Gerrit experience.

I’ve seen many positives, like


   - just one-click submit after a successful review,
   - out-of-the-box shared review responsibility among all committers,
   - really fast turn-around for the unsuccessful reviews(it’s so easy to
   build on top of the previous patch and resubmit for a new review)
   - and the ability to integrate with build voters that will validate the
   commit.

On the other hand there are problems too, here are just some of them.


   - To use Gerrit you need to add Change-Id attribute to your commit
   messages. No worries here – there’s a git hook that can do this
   automatically… but not for merges. So to stay out of trouble rebasing is
   the way to go.
   - Displaying merge diffs need more work – sometimes these are empty(when
   merging two branches), on other occasions they don’t contain conflicting
   files.
   - The way Gerrit handles dependencies between changes feels unnatural. A
   specific characteristic of Gerrit is that it stays between your local git
   repository and the origin, acting as Purgatory. For some reason developers
   are allowed to build new changes on top of changes still in Gerrit(not
   submitted to origin). Now this is where your life can turn into hell. This
   is a problem people stumble into amazingly often(everyday). Such situations
   have many solutions but from experience I can assure you most people just
   start over, abandoning their previous effort.

I’m well aware most of these are simply usability issues and you can easily
avoid them by following the recommended rulebook( + other rulebooks you may
have), but it’s a fact this complicates devs’ lives without obvious need to.



Personally, I love my console git workflow(occasionally + SourceTree). It
just works whatever I do. I know the simple things are simple to do, but I
can also do complex ones if I need to. I can undo anything and don’t need a
rulebook “just to be safe”. To me Gerrit is like a little mosquito in my
calm git room. I can live with it but it’s a bit annoying.



Having said that I strongly believe Gerrit can one day deliver and actually
make my workflow simpler and reviews easier, I just feel it isn’t there yet.



>From Virgo perspective, if you think we can try Gerrit in the current state
of the repos(moving them was mentioned?), we can try and see how it goes.
But if it requires more serious effort I would vote we wait for now.



Best Regards

Bobby

On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 10:26 AM, Glyn Normington <gnormington@xxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

Based on https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=283749#c92, if we
do decide to git gerrit a go, perhaps we should move all the Virgo and
Gemini Web repos at once. Thoughts?

Regards,
Glyn

On Wednesday, 23 November 2011 at 08:24, Glyn Normington wrote:

 Gerrit is available on a limited, bleeding-edge basis:

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=283749#c79

Since we've discussed using gerrit in Virgo before, I'm inclined to
volunteer the kernel as a trial repository. What do others thinks,
particularly those with experience of Gerrit?

Regards,
Glyn

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--
Wayne Beaton
The Eclipse Foundation
Twitter: @waynebeaton
EclipseCon
          2012

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