“But we do have tools that insert the Bugzilla number in all the commits of the series, assist with the squash, etc.”

Are these internal-only, or are they something we could evaluate when we move to the PR process? If not, are they based on anything we could leverage?

I believe that the plan is to stick with Bugzilla for the immediate future rather than use GitHub Issues (which is probably for the best for now, given the span across repos and access levels), so any tooling to tie that together would be interesting to evaluate.

<Tangent>
In Mu we have a similar problem of keeping track of what features/bugs have already been upstreamed and when can they be dropped during an upstream integration, so that’s the more personal interest I have in such automation.

Thanks!

- Bret

From: Andrew Fish<mailto:afish@...>
Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2020 8:00 PM
To: Laszlo Ersek<mailto:lersek@...>
Cc: devel@edk2.groups.io<mailto:devel@edk2.groups.io>; spbrogan@...<mailto:spbrogan@...>; rfc@edk2.groups.io<mailto:rfc@edk2.groups.io>; Desimone, Nathaniel L<mailto:nathaniel.l.desimone@...>; Bret Barkelew<mailto:Bret.Barkelew@...>; Kinney, Michael D<mailto:michael.d.kinney@...>; Leif Lindholm (Nuvia address)<mailto:leif@...>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [edk2-devel] [edk2-rfc] GitHub Pull Request based Code Review Process

On May 21, 2020, at 6:30 AM, Laszlo Ersek <lersek@...> wrote:

On 05/20/20 00:25, Sean wrote:

On 5/19/2020 1:41 PM, Laszlo Ersek wrote:

Your proposal to "don't exclude squash merge workflows" is a trap. If
we tolerate that option -- which is obviously the sloppy, and hence
more convenient, option for some maintainers and some contributors,
to the detriment of the git history --, then almost every core
maintainer will use it as frequently as they can. In the long term,
that will hurt many consumers of the core code. It will limit the
ability of people not regularly dealing with a particular core module
to file a fine-grained bug report for that module, maybe even propose
a fix. From the regression analyst's side, if the bug report starts
with "I have a bisection log", that's already a good day. And your
proposal would destroy that option, because maintainers and people in
general are irrepairably lazy and undisciplined. We cannot post a
community member shoulder-by-shoulder with every core package
reviewer/maintainer to prevent the latter from approving a
squash-on-merge, out of pure laziness. I'm 100% sure the "option" to
squash-on-merge would *immediately* be abused for a lot more than
just "typo fixes". There isn't enough manpower to watch the watchers,
so "no squash-on-merge" needs to be a general rule.

I have trouble with this line of thinking. The maintainers are and
should be considered the representatives of this code base. They
have a vested interest to enable this repository to work for them. If
they really are viewed as "sloppy" or "lazy" then we are destined to
fail anyway.

You put it very well. "They have a vested interest to enable this
repository to work for them." Key part being "*for them*".

Core maintainers are responsible for making this repository work for a
lot larger camp than just themselves. Even if squash-on-merge satisfied
the requirements that core maintainers presented, squash-on-merge would
still hurt the larger community that depends on those packages.

The core-consumer community may not necessarily participate in the
day-to-day maintenance of the core packages, but they do report bugs and
even contributes bugfixes / occasional features, when their particular
use cases require those actions.

And squash-on-merge hurts those activities, down the road, because the
git history is instrumental to analyzing and learning the code base.

For example, the question "why do we call this function here?"
immediately leads to running "git blame" (possibly a series of git-blame
commands, to navigate past code movements and such). In the end
git-blame leads to a particular commit, and that commit is supposed to
answer the question. If the commit is huge (e.g. a squash of an entire
feature), then the question is not answered, and git-blame has been
rendered useless.

Nothing in my statement of "don't exclude squash merge workflow"
requested that we allow a PR to be squashed into a single commit that
you believe should be a patch series.

If the button is there, maintainers will click it even in cases when
they shouldn't, and I won't be able to catch them. The result will not
necessarily hurt the maintainer (not at once, anyway), but it will harm
others that investigate the git history afterwards -- possibly years
later.

I can't watch all CoreFoobarPkg pull requests on github to prevent this.
On the other hand, I can, and do, monitor the edk2-devel list for
seriously mis-organized patch sets, especially for core packages where
I've formed an "I had better watch out for this core package"
impression.

I have made requests under core patch sets where I was mostly unfamiliar
with the technical subject *for the time being*, asking just for
improvements to the granularity of the series. Knowing the improved
granularity might very well help me *in the future*.


The mailing list equivalent of "squash-on-merge" would be the following:

- contributor posts v1 with patches 1/5 .. 5/5 (for example),

- reviewer requests updates A, B, and C,

- contributor posts (in response to the v1 blurb, i.e. 0/5) further
patches 6/8, 7/8, 8/8

- reviewer checks the new patches and approves them, functionally,

- maintainer says "OK let me merge this",

- maintainer applies the patches (all 8 of them) from the list, on a
local branch,

- maintainer runs a git rebase squashing the whole thing into a single
patch,

- maintainer does *not* review the result,

- maintainer opens a PR with the resultant single patch,

- CI passes,

- the patch is merged.


With the list-based process, the disaster in the last step is mitigated
in at least three spots:

- All subscribers have a reasonably good chance to notice and intervene
when the incremental fixups 6/8, 7/8, 8/8 are posted as followups to
the v1 blurb, clearly with an intent to squash.

- Because the maintainer has to do *extra work* for the squashing, the
natural laziness of the maintainer works *against* the disaster. Thus
he or she will likely not perform the local rebase & squash. Instead
they will ask the contributor to perform a *fine-grained* squash (i.e.
squash each fixup into the one original patch where the fixup
belongs), and to submit a v2 series.

- If someone interested in the git history catches (after the fact) that
the maintainer merged a significantly different patch set from what
had been posted and reviewed, they can raise a stern complaint on the
list, and next time the maintainer will now better.

(This is not a theoretical option; I low-key follow both the list
traffic and the new commits in the git history (whenever I pull). In the
past I had reported several patch application violations (mismanaged
feedback tags, intrusive updates post-review, etc). Nowadays it's gotten
quite OK, thankfully, and I'm terrified of losing those improvements.)


If we just plaster a huge squash-on-merge button or checkbox over the
web UI, it *will* be abused (maintainer laziness will work *towards* the
disaster), with only a microscopic chance for me to prevent the abuse.

It's not that "I believe" that this or that *particular* series should
not be squashed. "Not squashing" is not the exception but the rule. The
*default* approach is that the submitter incorporates incremental fixes
into the series at the right stages, they maintain a proper series
structure over the iterations, and they propose revised versions of the
series in full. Squashing is the exception; for example one reason is,
"if you separate these changes from each other, then the tree will not
build in the middle; they belong together, please squash them, and
resubmit for review".

I do think those rules will need to be defined but that is needed
today anyway.

Rules are only as good as their enforcement is.

In my work world we require code review by a manager and that is the de facto enforcement mechanism. Basically there is always an owner to make sure the process was followed :)

Also in our world the squash is a developer choice. But we do have tools that insert the Bugzilla number in all the commits of the series, assist with the squash, etc.

The question is not how nice it is to use squash-on-merge in the
minuscule set of situations when it might be justified; the question is
how difficult it would be to prevent the inevitable abuses.

The list lets me advocate for proper git history hygiene reasonably
efficiently (although I still miss a bunch of warts due to lack of
capacity). With the squash-on-merge button or checkbox, the flood gates
would fly open. I won't stand for that (not as a steward anyway).

I think our world views differ fundamentally. I value the git history
*way* above my own comfort, and everyone else's (accounting for both
contributor and day-to-day maintainer roles). I guess you prefer the
reciprocal of that ratio.

I'd also point out that the processes you chose kind of defines your quanta of work. It is likely you would be willing to tackle a really big change as a large patch set, that you would likely break up into multiple PRs in a squash on commit world. In a squash on commit world you also might break a Bugzilla (BZ) up into dependent BZs, a tree of BZs. That might sound crazy, but when you work on a bigger project and there are BZs for EFI, T2, macOS, the Installer, and the RecoveryOS for a customer visible feature this tree of BZ might be familiar and make sense to you.

But I think the real argument for consistency is we have a rich git history that has value. We have made resource tradeoffs to have that rich git history so to me it makes the most sense, for these project, to try to preserve our past investment in git history.

Thanks,

Andrew Fish

Thanks,
Laszlo

On 05/22/20 07:48, Bret Barkelew wrote:

In Mu we have a similar problem of keeping track of what features/bugs
have already been upstreamed and when can they be dropped during an
upstream integration, so that's the more personal interest I have in
such automation.

Proposal:

- Whenever upstreaming a bugfix or a feature, open an upstream BZ.

- In your downstream ticket for the same bugfix or feature,
cross-reference the upstream BZ URL. This shouldn't be a normal comment,
but a dedicated field. In Bugzilla, there is "See Also" (it can carry a
list of URLs). In our own (RH) Bugzilla instance, "See Also" has been
replaced with an "External Trackers" list, but the idea is the same.

- When you rebase, run a git-log over the upstream commit history being
straddled, and collect the upstream BZs referenced. For example:

$ git log edk2-stable201911..edk2-stable202002 \
| grep -E -o 'https://bugzilla.tianocore.org/show_bug.cgi\?id=[0-9]+' \
| sort -u

This reliably presents the set of upstream BZs that were *touched on* in
the subject development cycle, because TianoCore contributors diligently
reference BZs in commit messages. Right? :)

- Use a script to fetch the fresh status of each of those BZ URLs,
because in some cases, "touched on a BZ" does not guarantee "fixed BZ".
Some BZs may require multiple waves of patches.

Of course, BZs that *have* been fixed will all report RESOLVED|FIXED,
because TianoCore contributors and maintainers diligently close BZs as
FIXED when the corresponding patches are merged. They even mention the
commit range(s) implementing the related code changes, without fail.
Right? :)

- Once you have your set of Really Fixed (TM) upstream BZs, run a search
in your downstream tracker to locate the referring downstream tickets,
checking the "See Also" (etc) fields.


In a more serious tone: while Red Hat preaches and practices "upstream
first", we obviously *do* have downstream tickets for bugfixes and
features. And if we are *inheriting* patches for them via a rebase (as
opposed to backporting / cherry-picking them), then we benefit from the
same kind of linkage. That's why I keep "lecturing" maintainers when
they fail to close BZs, and/or to note the subject commit ranges (which
I might want to investigate manually).

Now, I realize that "git forges" can auto-close tickets when
encountering ticket references in merged patches. The problem is that
*multiple* patches may reference a ticket and *still* not constitute a
complete fix for that ticket -- see my "multiple waves of patches" note
above. Automation cannot fully supplant manual ticket wrangling.


NB, the above procedure could also help with composing the "feature
list" for any upcoming edk2 stable tag. When collecting the URLs, and
checking their fresh statuses, also check the "Product" fields. If
Product is "TianoCore Feature Requests", then the ticket is a good
candidate to name at
<https://github.com/tianocore/tianocore.github.io/wiki/EDK-II-Release-Planning#proposed-features>.

Thanks,
Laszlo