RFE: use patchwork to submit a patch

Tue Oct 15 02:12:40 AEDT 2019

Hi Dmitry,

On Mon, Oct 14, 2019 at 04:58:17PM +0200, Dmitry Vyukov wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 7:20 PM Shuah Khan wrote:
> > On 10/11/19 2:57 AM, Greg KH wrote:
> >> On Thu, Oct 10, 2019 at 10:41:50AM -0400, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> >>> Hi, all:
> >>>
> >>> I would like to propose a new (large) feature to patchwork with the goal to
> >>> make the process of submitting a patch easier for newbies and people
> >>> generally less familiar with patch-based development. This was discussed
> >>> previously on the workflows list:
> >>> https://lore.kernel.org/workflows/20190930202451.GA14403@pure.paranoia.local/
> >>>
> >>> How I envision this would work:
> >>>
> >>> - user creates an account (which requires a mail confirmation) >> - they choose a "submit patch" option from the menu
> >>> - the patch submission screen has a succession of screens:
> >>>
> >>>   1. a screen with a single field allowing a user to paste a URL to     their
> >>> fork of the git repository. Once submitted, patchwork does a     "git
> >>> ls-remote" to attempt to get a list of refs and to verify that     this is
> >>> indeed a valid git repository
> >>
> >> s/valid git repository/valid git repository based on the kernel git tree/
> >>
> >> Otherwise you might be sending out lots of emails for other projects :)
> >>
> >>>   2. next screen asks the user to select the ref to work from using the
> >>> list obtained from the remote. Once submitted, patchwork performs a     `git
> >>> clone --reference` to clone the repository locally using a     local fork of
> >>> the same repo to minimize object transfer. This part     requires that:
> >>>        a. patchwork project is configured with a path to a local fork,
> >>> if this feature is enabled for a project
> >>>        b. that fork is kept current via some mechanism outside of
> >>> patchwork (e.g. with grokmirror)
> >>>        c. there is some sanity-checking during the clone process to
> >>> avoid abuse (e.g. a sane timeout, a tmpdir with limited size,          etc
> >>> -- other suggestions welcome)
> >>>
> >>>   3. next screen asks the user to pick a starting commit from the log.
> >>> Once submitted, patchwork generates the patch from the commit     provided
> >>> to the tip of the branch selected by the user earlier,
> >>>      using git format-patch.
> >>>
> >>>   4. next screen asks the user to review the patch to make sure this is
> >>> what they want to submit. Once confirmed, patchwork performs two
> >>> admin-defined optional hooks:
> >>>
> >>>        a. a hook to generate a list of cc's (e.g. get_maintainer.pl)
> >>>        b. a sanity check hook (e.g. checkpatch.pl)
> >>
> >> I will note that many "first patch" submissions are checkpatch.pl
> >> cleanups for staging.  When doing that, I require that they do "one
> >> logical change per patch", which means that many of the individual
> >> patches themselves will not be checkpatch.pl clean, because many lines
> >> have multiple issues with them (tabs, spaces, format, length, etc.)
> >>
> >> So other than that minor thing, sounds interesting.  It's hard to
> >> determine just how difficult the whole "set up git and send a patch out"
> >> process is for people these days given the _huge_ numbers of new
> >> contributions we keep getting, and the numerous good tutorials we have
> >> created that spell out exactly how to do this.
> >>
> >> So you might be "solving" a problem that we don't really have.  It's
> >> hard to tell :(
> >
> > I agree with this. I don't think this a problem that is worth solving.
> > When a new developer wants to send a patch, they don't need to create
> > any accounts. They setup their email client and send patch.
> >
> > We have several resources that walk them through setting up email
> > clients and sending patches. checkpatch.pl can be automated with
> > git hooks.
> >
> >>> I know this is a pretty big RFE, and I would like to hear your thoughts
> >>> about this. If there is general agreement that this is doable/good idea, I
> >>> may be able to come up with funding for this development as part of the
> >>> overall tooling improvement proposal.
> >>
> >> The workflow seems sane, and matches what most people do today, with the
> >> exception that it "solves" the git send-email issue, right?  Is that our
> >> biggest barrier?
> >>
> >> I would recommend interviewing some of the recent kernel mentor project
> >> and outreachy applicants first, to try to determine exactly what their
> >> problems, if any, were with our development process.  If they say that
> >> this type of tool/workflow would have saved them hours of time and
> >> energy, then that's a great indication that we should try to do this.
> >
> > I would say considering the number of applicants to mentorship program
> > and new developers it will be lot overhead to require them to create
> > patchwork accounts, and it might even be hard overtime. A lot of them
> > start out and drop out in the middle. With the current setup, nothing
> > to cleanup.
> >
> > Setting up email clients and git hooks is one time task. It is the
> > easiest of the learning curve for many new developers. New developers
> > struggle with getting the change logs right, coding styles right, and
> > responding to review comments and acting on them.
> >
> > These aren't something that can be automated and they just have to
> > learn through experience of sending patches.
> >
> > My opinion based on contact with new developers as well running the
> > mentorship program, I would sat this isn't something that needs
> > solving.
> 
> As one data point, I cannot send emails with git send-email anymore.
> It used to work, then broke and I don't know how to fix it. Now it says:
> 
> 5.7.8 Username and Password not accepted. Learn more at
> 5.7.8  https://support.google.com/mail/?p=BadCredentials
> s10sm8376885wrr.5 - gsmtp
> 
> I suspect it has something to do with two factor auth.
> So that's it: it cannot contribute to kernel right now.
> I will not consider time spent fixing it as useful time investment.

Starting from an estalished working process, a change on your e-mail
provider side broke your workflow. The exact same problem could happen
regardless of how changes get submitted, a corporate HTTP proxy or
firewall could also break HTTP-based submissions.

Now, gmail being one of the largest e-mail providers, I think it's fair
to consider that the kernel community should provide clear and easy to
follow instructions on how to use git-send-email with gmail. In
particular, with two-factor authentication being widespread, how to set
it up with git-send-email should likely be described in
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/email-clients.html.
Blaming it solely on the SMTP protocol is a bit of a shortcut.

> Any kernel documentation that I can find for gmail, mentions config
> that I am already using and that is not working:
> https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/search.html?q=gmail&check_keywords=yes&area=default#
> https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/email-clients.html?highlight=gmail
> 
> As another data point, I spoke to KP Singh at the Plumbers. He is a
> "returning" kernel developer (so already did this before), he said it
> took him 3 days and 52 configurations changes (all were committed to
> git, so was possible to count exactly) to setup mail client properly.
> And he is "staffed" to do kernel work, I would expect that most people
> who don't _have_ to do kernel contributions will turn away half-way.

That's very interesting information, is there any way that more details
about the 52 steps could be shared ?

> As another data point, several people told me that they are afraid of
> sending kernel patches b/c there is so much "on you" to do right.

Is that related to the submission mechanism, or to all the other things
you need to get right ?

> I would say that we need to aim at  a process that does not require a
> friendly experienced person to answer any of your questions in the
> common case. Lots of people will simply not ask any questions.

I fully agree with that.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart