[sane-devel] Requiring GitLab merge requests for all changes

[Povilas Kanapickas]

On 12/31/21 12:36 AM, Ralph Little wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 2021-12-29 1:46 p.m., Povilas Kanapickas wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> What do you think about requiring merge requests for all incoming
>> changes on the sane-backends repository?
>>
>> This mostly doesn't change the current process because the majority of
>> changes land to master via merge requests already. If the developer does
>> not think a true review is necessary then he can merge the new merge
>> request himself as soon as CI completes which currently introduces a
>> delay of around 15 minutes.
>>
>> Out of 20 direct pushes to master since 1.0.32 we still managed to break
>> master once (twice, if we count a MR merge without waiting for CI). This
>> is important because any build failure will cause bisecting harder for
>> unrelated backends.
>>
>> Lastly, merge requests provide a place for discussions even after a
>> merge request is merged (e.g. if issues have been caused). Filing issue
>> is not equivalent because there is no code review UI there.
>>
>> I can only think a single reasonable exception for the above policy: the
>> push of the commit announcing a new release. With merge request we would
>> need to create the release tag on a merge commit which is confusing.
>>
>> Please let me know what you think.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Povilas
> 
> Personally, I always make changes to branches. I don't believe that
> there should be functional changes direct to master, even for small
> corrections.
> I don't know if I would necessarily go all the way to require MRs for
> every change but I am open to be convinced.

I'm not sure I understood correctly, so instead of guessing, let's
double check :) Are you not convinced that we should add a rule in
GitLab that forbids direct pushes or are you against general policy?

My though was that maybe it's just enough to have an agreement on the
mailing list and then remind people about it when they break it. If this
is still frequent, then we can add a hard rule in GitLab.

Cheers,
Povilas