[Reviewers] Recommending Phabricator

[Martin von Zweigbergk]

On Wed, Feb 7, 2018 at 9:54 AM Gregory Szorc <gregory.szorc at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Reviewers,
>
> I just made some significant changes to
> https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/ContributingChanges to increase
> readability and friendliness to new developers. Mostly in the "sending
> patches" section.
>
> One of the changes I made was to recommend Phabricator over emailing
> patches. I did this because I think Phabricator is more friendly to new
> contributors and provides a gateway for new contributors getting more
> involved.
>
> A new contributor may not wish to subscribe to the mailing list because of
> its volume. Phabricator allows them to use a friendly web interface to mark
> up their patches, reply to comments, etc. Unless you have lived in mailing
> list development before, it is a foreign concept and difficult to do things
> right. I think Phabricator is much easier for people to use, especially if
> they are coming from GitHub, Bitbucket, etc. Plus, from a new contributor
> perspective, it's easier to follow the state of the patch, as Phabricator
> updates automatically when it is committed.
>
> Furthermore, Phabricator allows users to subscribe to changes relevant to
> them. For example, https://phab.mercurial-scm.org/H13 is a subscription
> from Kevin Cox for all Rust changes. This facilitates drive-by reviews from
> casual contributors (Kevin already commented on that base85 Rust review
> because he was subscribed to it). Supporting these kinds of interactions
> without having to subscribe to the fire hose of the mailing list is good
> for the project.
>
> But I know recommending Phabricator on the wiki may be controversial. So I
> wanted to tell people so we can have a discussion here if needed.
>
> In addition, I think the time has come for more of Mercurial's core
> contributors to transition from email to Phabricator.
>
> I do still have some minor nits with Phabricator. But I find the workflow
> much more pleasant. The ability to expand file context and look at diff
> coloring when reviewing is terrific. I also love how the stack tracking
> feature makes it easy to land a series of commits piecemeal. This enables
> forward progress to be made without resulting in confusing [PATCH X of Y]
> mismatches on the mailing list. We get notifications for commits when they
> are made (you don't have to send an email when you queue) and the
> Phabricator status is updated automatically.
>
> As a reviewer, I've noticed I'm biasing to looking at Phabricator first
> then falling back to Patchwork if I still want to do reviews. Phabricator
> is just a more pleasant experience for me as both a reviewer and a
> contributor.
>
> I'd like to encourage the people on this list still using email/pushgate
> to transition to Phabricator. And I think we should consider pushing other
> contributors to transition as well.
>
> Thoughts?
>

I agree with all of that. Thanks for updating the wiki and thanks for
bringing this up.


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