[csw-maintainers] Code and package reviews

[Ben Walton]

Excerpts from Maciej Bliziński's message of Mon Jun 13 06:05:41 -0400 2011:

> Our aim is to build a culture in which peer review is one of the key
> elements.  There needs to be an environment which encourages peer
> reviews and makes them easy.

A thought I had on the train tonight is that review could begin with
the maintainer detailing the following changes for a package release:

1. Version info.
2. Changed configure options (if any).
3. Overrides used and why.
4. New or removed patches and their function.
5. Filesystem layout changes and how they're gracefully handled.

Having the maintainer lay this info out clearly to kickstart the
discussion does a few things:

1. Makes the maintainer think about the changes in a package at a
   level higher than the build recipe.
2. Gives other maintainers insight into hot spots to review if they
   want to look in more depth.

As an example, for the pending php5 release, I'd float a message like:

--snip--
* This package changed from 5.2.9 to 5.3.6.
* The GAR recipe was overhauled entirely to make it a single make file
  again.  (Builds in a few hours instead of a day.)
* Several build system patches were removed as they're no longer needed.
* I created new patches to strip some ucb/lib references, fix
  non-portable grep use in the build system and ensure the 32-bit
  build for postgresql modules worked properly on sparc boxes.
* I dropped the mbregex configure argument to fix a mis-fire in the
  build system, but this option, aside from breaking functionality
  instead of being a no-op is deprecated anyway.
* I've updated several dependencies to match split out libraries.
* I introduced a special module helper in GAR to enable easy,
  automatic module install/uninstall without a special CAS or
  postinstall script.
* I santized the naming convention to be CSWphp5-foo instead of the
  older CSWphp5foo.
* I use modulations in GAR to provide the cgi and ap2 modules.
* I migrated configuration to /etc/opt/csw/php5.
--snip--

This should provide a pretty good platform for comments, questions and
critiques, I think.  

Thoughts?

Thanks
-Ben
--
Ben Walton
Systems Programmer - CHASS
University of Toronto
C:416.407.5610 | W:416.978.4302