[FFmpeg-devel] Reintroducing FFmpeg to Debian

[Thomas Goirand]

On 08/15/2014 11:53 PM, The Wanderer wrote:
> It's also something the Linux kernel is still doing, with apparent
> success.

Yes, the Linux kernel is a successful project. Does this mean using a
list for reviewing patches is a good thing? No! The workflow with a list
is simply horrible. Using git-review and gerrit is so much better.

> I for one consider it to be a much more public, transparent, and
> discoverable way to let proposed patches and the review of same be open
> to public view, compared to the way various other projects seem to do
> it.
> 
> Making sure everything passes through the mailing list, and most if not
> all substantive discussion happens on the mailing list, is a lot better
> than having some discussion on the mailing lists and some on a bug
> tracker and some on IRC and some via private mail and so on. (The most
> ridiculously extreme example of this fragmentation that I know of is
> probably the Mozilla project.)

This reasoning may work when you have only a small amount of information
to read. When you are overwhelmed with it, having different places to do
different things is a much better approach. Sending patches to a list
simply doesn't scale.

Also, with a list, it's not convenient at all to point out a line in a
patch in a mailing list. You must extract the relevant lines, cut/past
them, and comment them. Instead, double clicking on the line of the
patch which is displayed on a web interface is much more convenient.

> There's nothing wrong with having discussion in those various areas, of
> course; it's probably inevitable, and it's even a good thing. It's just
> that it's a lot harder for someone not intimately involved with the
> project to follow discussion if it happens in such a variety of places,
> and there's value to be found in making sure that everything passes
> through one central (discussion-enabled) point before landing.

Lists are good tools for discussing where a project should go, release
goals, and so on. They aren't good tools to do patch reviews. I've used
both, and I'm convinced of that.

Thomas Goirand (zigo)