Re: [ANNOUNCE] git-series: track changes to a patch series over time

[Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>]

On Mon, Aug 01, 2016 at 07:55:54AM +0000, Eric Wong wrote:
> Christian Couder <christian.couder@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 12:10 PM, Richard Ipsum
> > <richard.ipsum@codethink.co.uk> wrote:
> > > On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 11:40:55PM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote:
> > > [snip]
> > >>
> > >> I'd welcome any feedback, whether on the interface and workflow, the
> > >> internals and collaboration, ideas on presenting diffs of patch series,
> > >> or anything else.
> 
> > > I'm particularly interested in trying to establish a standard for
> > > storing review data in git. I've got a prototype for doing that[3],
> > > and an example tool that uses it[4]. The tool is still incomplete/buggy though.
> > 
> > There is also git-appraise (https://github.com/google/git-appraise)
> > written in Go to store code review data in Git.
> > It looks like it stores its data in git notes and can be integrated
> > with Rust (https://github.com/Nemo157/git-appraise-rs).
> 
> I'm not convinced another format/standard is needed besides the
> email workflow we already use for git and kernel development.

Not all projects use a patches-by-email workflow, or want to.  To the
extent that tools and projects use some other workflow, standardizing
the format they use to store patch reviews (including per-line
annotations, approvals, test results, etc) seems preferable to having
each tool use its own custom format.

> I also see the reliance on an after-the-fact search engine
> (which can be tuned/replaced) as philosophically inline with
> what git does, too, such as not having rename tracking and
> doing delayed deltafication.

Storing review data in git doesn't mean it needs to end up in the
history of the project itself; it can use after-the-fact annotations on
a commit.

> Email also has the advantage of having existing tooling, and
> being (at least for now) federated without a single point of
> failure.

Storing review data in git makes it easy to push and pull it, which can
provide the basis for a federated system.

- Josh Triplett