Hi Guix,
This email starts as a follow-up to #695 (doc: Document bulk updates.[1]), since
it brought this topic to the surface. To be clear, I'm not against the
automation. I even want to mark out all packages that are not working with
‘guix refresh’ :)
But my point is that, a trivial change in package definition is not necessarily
one for the specific package. If we check the change when updating one package,
why adding exceptions and doing less when updating more packages?
Speaking of trivial changes, I notice that sometimes unsubmitted changes are
pushed to master. I did the same thing as well, even with several breakages, so
I understand why this happens. I'm not comfortable with being suddenly called
"privileged" after being a committer, but this is the truth, at least for now.
I have thought about an approach that may partially address the above two
points, while empowering the community more, with the cost of some efficiency:
1. Setting a minimum requirement for committing changes
- Require all changes to be submitted first. This is actually enforcing the
commit policy[2].
- Add more pull request templates[3], gradually improve them + documentations
they link to, and consider the pull request ready when suitable template for
the change is finished. Codeberg doesn't support multiple templates but we
can have our own rule ;)
2. Explicitly turn privileges into responsibilities and encourage the whole
community to join in the development.
- Users are encouraged to review pull requests they are interested in, they
can comment and provide information to finish the template, with the help of
the checklist and linked documentations. (comments that are out of the
documented scopes don't have to be addressed, as an approach to improve the
documentation and avoid receiving conflict reviews while not knowing which
one to follow)
- Team members are users, additionally since they choose to gain more
permissions, they are committed to reviewing team-specific patches, editing
pull request descriptions, filling in the right template, and setting labels
(we can add more labels[4] to help the process).
- Committers are users and likely team members, additionally since they choose
to gain more permissions, they are committed to applying pull requests that
are ready.
This might be a GCD topic, but I may not have writing energy to finish one.
Since this also mainly depends on the expectation on Guix, I'm sending the email
out to see how it goes.
Thanks
[1]: https://codeberg.org/guix/guix/pulls/695
Cc'd people on this pull request. Also Simon, because they have an interesting
position :)
[2]:
https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Commit-Access.html#Commit-Policy
[3]:
https://codeberg.org/guix/guix/src/branch/master/.forgejo/pull_request_template.md
Of the multiple templates we'd have one for packages like the current one, IMO
bulk updates should use it, since it's not special compared to updating one
package.
[4]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2025-06/msg00002.html
