Improving our review criteria

[Martin Pool]

2009/11/13 Ian Clatworthy <ian.clatworthy at canonical.com>:
> In summary, I think our emphasis on quality is awesome but I'd like to see us put the user more at the center of it. Stuff like better packaging, easier migration, cleaner documentation and faster feature rollout need higher emphasis in our culture IMO.

I agree we're probably getting the balance wrong in that we are seeing
more patches stall than we are seeing regressions introduced by
should-have-been trivial changes.

The counterargument is not so much that individual changes may be
wrong but that they may have serious knock-on effects, or that the
eventual accumulation of untested code will make things harder to
change, and hard to even clean up.

The TDD argument is that writing the tests as you go should be
actually helping you with development, and that this is at least as
important as accumulating a test suite over time.

So I'd like to see an emphasis on:

 * holistic assessment of patches, including the effect on bugs,
features, testing, and code cleanliness
 * incremental merges, without counting on follow-on patches
 * making testing easier
 * helping people see the benefit in testing and learn to do it
themselves, rather than forcing them to do it

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>