On Friday, 23 January 2015 15:21:34 CEST, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
There is no way an artist who has a nice patch for Krita is
ever going to be able to inducted into becoming a Krita
developer if they have to follow
instructions like this:
https://techbase.kde.org/Development/Gerrit
Hi Boudewijn,
that page contains instructions for existing KDE developers on how to work
with KDE's Gerrit effectively. You are right that an artist who has zero
experience with Git and is writing their first C++ patch is likely going to
have trouble with following a developer-level documentation. A better
introductionary documentation is surely needed, and it will be needed
regardless of what platform we choose.
The people with the lowest level of developer experience that I've been in
touch within KDE are probably some of the GCI students. I think it is
reasonable to assume that they still know a bit more than your artist which
is about to send a patch to Krita. This might explain why these students
were able to contribute via Gerrit without much trouble, and why I
initially questioned your analysis.
And, apart from detail-by-detail comparisons, gerrit would be an exceedingly
bad choice for a community like KDE, with its enormous diversity of skill
levels. Gerrit is uninviting and complicated.
Ah, this might be the core of these differing opinions. Do I understand you
right? In your mind, KDE should offer tools which make it extremely easy
for inexperienced users to get involved, even if it makes the job of
maintainers and/or senior developers a bit more complicated, is that right?
In my mind, KDE should care primarily about people who are doing the work
now, while providing enough ropes for motivated newcomers to be able to
participate if they are willing to follow instructions and learn new stuff.
Now, both of these approaches certainly have merits. Without ingesting new
blood, a project will eventually die. Without caring about experienced
developers' comfort, maintainers will drift away and the death will come,
too.
Maybe the tools suitable for these two approaches are not necessarily the
same, then.
Gerrit is just a kind of reviewboard with a git integration, phabricator
is a whole integrated development platform.
Agreed, which is why the comparison should be about Phabricator +
whatever_else_is_needed on one hand, and Gerrit +
whatever_is_needed_for_that on the other hand. Comparing individual pieces
without seeing the whole mosaic doesn't make much sense.
With kind regards,
Jan
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