[Twisted-Python] Development Process Failure

[Jean-Paul Calderone]

Hey all,

Recently I've been bothered by a systematic shortcoming of the Twisted
development process.  When changes are made in response to a review,
they are generally made in a way which is difficult to inspect.  The
value of a review is lost if the valid points raised by it are not
addressed before the changes are applied to trunk.  Often, there's no
problem here, but it sometimes happens that /not/ all of the review
points are addressed before a ticket is re-submitted for review.  In
these cases, one of two things happens.  The re-reviewer might go back
to the previous review and verify that all of the points raised in it
have been addressed.  This is a time consuming process, though it can
be made easier if the author responds to each review point (and even
easier if a changeset is linked in each response).  Or, the re-reviewer
might assume that the author addressed all points and just look over the
branch for anything missed in the previous review.

In either of these cases, time is being wasted, but in the latter case,
time is being wasted /and/ bad code is being added to trunk.  I would
like to consider how we might address this shortcoming of the development
process.

One possibility is to explicitly adjust the review guidelines and direct
reviewers always to verify that previous review points have actually been
addressed.  What ideas do other people have?

Jean-Paul