Re: How can we decrease the cognitive overhead for contributors?

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hi Simon,

Simon Tournier <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Liliana,
>
> On Mon, 11 Sep 2023 at 19:53, Liliana Marie Prikler 
> <liliana.prikler@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> For "patch does not apply", the forge solution is typically to send a
>> notification to the issuer.
>
> No, that does not match my small experience.  Because often the issuer
> is gone or not responding.  As a reviewer using the forge solution, I am
> still able to pull the issuer branch and then resolve the conflicts if
> any.
>
> Using “our” workflow, I fail earlier in the process.  I am not able to
> apply the patches against any branches (pull the PR somehow).  An
> example:
>
>         [bug#62202] [PATCH 0/21] Juliahub import script.
>         https://issues.guix.gnu.org/msgid/871qlq89kz.fsf@ngraves.fr
>
> Even before looking at it, I have to spend some time to find a way to
> manually apply the patches.  Then, rebasing on the top of master could
> lead to conflict but that another story and the same appears whatever
> the workflow.

I think this kind of problem has improved though, since we deploy by
default our etc/git/config snippet, which sets 'useAutoBase = true'.

At least I don't have a problem when applying patches with 'git am -3s'.
I don't see what is specially difficult here (perhaps there are too many
options available to do the task?), but we could document some ways,
perhaps adding a new 'Reviewing others work' section to the Contributing
node?  It could show how to do it from either an Gnus perspective
(Emacs) or via 'wget -O- $mumi_url | git am -3s' etc.  and provide some
guidance, perhaps with a link to
<https://notabug.org/apteryx/guix-api-examples/src/master/command-line-hacks.sh>
until this is automated in a 'guix review' command or similar.

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim