Add as a reviewer option in Watched Projects setting

[Sven Selberg]

Hi all!

I wanted your opinion on something.

To give users more control over when they are added as reviewers I have a suggestion to add an 'Add As Reviewer' option to the Watched Projects setting.

I just wanted to get your opinion before I get started.

1. The initial attempt would be to simply add as reviewer with the same filter as Watched Projects has.

GUI example.

2. But I think we could aim for a more granular approach and add a filter like:

Add me as a reviewer when:

    * Change is created

    * Change has Verified +1

    * Change has Code Review +1

    * Change has Code Review +1 AND Verified +1

GUI example 1 with filter

GUI example 2 with filter

Best Regards

Sven

P.s. Having an "Add me as reviewer" option in Watched Projects was originally Gustaf's idea

[Björn Pedersen]

Hi,

I can see why you could want it.
But what would be the real benefit? Except for generating some more emails.
If a project needs specific reviewers than e.g. the reviewers plugin could be used.
Maybe just an email that a certain voting state  is reached  (notify on verified+1 ....) ?
Otherwise a good dashboard config should easliy give a list of changes one wants to review.

And how does this interact with custom labels?
So as a plugin I think it could be a solution.

[Sven Selberg]

Thanks for your input Björn.

To give you all some background.

At $DAY_JOB there have been some attempts to automate how architects, code owners and alike are added to reviews but it has never really worked. People get added to too much stuff and it ends up with a situation where Gerrit emails are filtered directly to the trash bin and the dashboard is completely useless since it spans several pages. It resulted in a situation where the only way you can get your code reviewed is to track down whoever should review it and send that (those) person(s) an email directly requesting a review. The effects being that the lead times from upload to merge can be really long.

The affected parties wanted some sort of way to configure which reviews they where added to, and we figured that the way you can configure email notifications in Watched Projects was quite a good fit for what we wanted.

This was one suggestion on how to solve a problem our users have.

I'm sure other organizations have (had) the same problem (gerrit maintainers should sort of have it as well). Any input on how this problem is solved in other organizations is of course very welcome.

See inline comments below.

/Sven

Den fredag 12 augusti 2016 kl. 11:25:23 UTC+2 skrev Björn Pedersen:

Hi,

I can see why you could want it.
But what would be the real benefit? Except for generating some more emails.

In our case it should generate less emails since the notifications should bee more "accurate" and therefore fewer.

If a project needs specific reviewers than e.g. the reviewers plugin could be used.

Some work on extension points and the reviewers plugin could possibly solve our problem. Our users specifically asked for some sort of GUI with a filter (but that could of course be fixed with a small web service using the reviewers plugin REST.

Maybe just an email that a certain voting state  is reached  (notify on verified+1 ....) ?

You could filter on either CR+1 or V+1 but if you wanted both CR+1 and V+1 before you get notified that requires some code changes in Gerrit core (I assume).

Otherwise a good dashboard config should easliy give a list of changes one wants to review.

Neighboring issue here with the fact that you (IIRC) can't filter on CR+1  or V+1 you can only filter on whether it's reviewed or not. And scrolling through pages to manually (ocularly) check if any of the 100+ changes that matches your filter is +1 +1 is not an option (for our users at least).

And how does this interact with custom labels?

My crude checkbox Example is rather limited in this sense, it wouldn't interact with them at all.  

So as a plugin I think it could be a solution.

That could be the way to go.