Thanks, that’s actually interesting. I’ve found making #5 work with limited human resources / deadlines challenging, and wondered what to do. My answer in the past has been to lower review quality (reviewing faster) while keeping #5.
In my case the priority for reviews was high, but we were limited by the reviewers/developers ratio since most people would not do reviews…
The problem of deciding what should be merged or blocked
If you want to merge something and I read it over and reject the PR because you forgot about concurrency, that doesn’t mean you don’t get to merge, it means that it’s not finished baking. And assuming you give a shit about the code your response should be “oh shit, lemme fix that and resubmit” OR “actually this code will never have concurrent access, and here’s why.” You’re making this process sound adversarial when it isn’t. It’s a group effort. Everyone wins or loses together.
You’re obviously right, you’re misunderstanding me. With blocked I didn’t meant “forever”, I meant until the issues is discussed. I’m merely asking how the reviewer is making the call on what should be addressed before merge in #5
If there is work that needs to be done, and you are asked to do it, the code will be merged when it’s right. I don’t decide what to merge, I decide when something is ready to merge.
you’re really nitpicking my English, which I know is not great, but yeah that’s what I was asking, so you use #5 with a single person making the final call on when something is ready.
You’re making this process sound adversarial when it isn’t.
Absolutely not, I’ve never said or thought that. But of course development is made of people and computers can only tell you what compiles, not “when it’s right” as you say. So of course I’m more curious to understand how to solve situations when you do have conflict, if you don’t it’s easy.
Everything gets reviewed. If you have a constructive comment you put it in the review.
I’m a tech lead now so that’s basically the end although if they want to argue their case I’ll hear them out.
So basically you’re saying that all the comments are welcome, and should be argued, but you have to appoint a person that have the final say on what to merge right?
I’m not sure what problem you think is being moved to the reviewer.
The problem of deciding what should be merged or blocked, I’ve mainly made this post to understand that, so saying “#5 or you’re crazy” doesn’t answer much. But I’ve probably worded that badly.
when you were asked to “just merge” why was the review still on going? too large, or you didn’t find an agreement with the autor?
Thanks for the insight
In your scenario, you need to identify: 1) what your success criteria is, 2) what sort of bugs could threaten your success criteria, 3) which person or persons can make the determination that a bug falls into that must-fix category.
I think is a good part of what I needed to be told, thank you!
Ok then you’re moving the problem to the reviewer, what change request would you say is a mandatory fix? In the place you worked, were you marking the comments on the review in any way to make them mandatory / non mandatory? Or just discussing them one by one?
For example, #3
yes that’s what I meant, comments on the review would just be a suggestion to the author, which can possibly fix but not in a controlled (or closed-loop as you said) manner.
software engineering processes seek to keep as many people working and out of each other’s way as possible, but it necessarily requires following steps that might seem like red-tape and TPS reports
In my experience even a too long staging process for merge/review, can hinder development since people that work on the same things can need each other changes to move on, so how to know where to trace the line and merge? No breaking the build I would say is universally accepted, but what if for example an issue is internal to a WIP feature?
Added a few details in the post. Of course it depends, but let’s say you’re the team lead and you have to fix a general rule (otherwise no one is going to do them) which one you’re more likely to go for? e.g. if you choose (2), it’s up to every single member.
Q: about #3
yes already merged, updated the post.
This is an article, based on an article+AI that is based on an article, that cite NO SOURCE whatsoever. What are u even discussing about guys…
Dont worry that’s not gonna happen. A collegue of mine use llms regularly for code reviews, but you have to put in the work to understand whether what they say makes sense and filter out false positives which are not occasional.