Is webrev generation still relevant?

Magnus Ihse Bursie magnus.ihse.bursie at oracle.com
Thu Jan 18 09:04:23 UTC 2024


At the onset of Project Skara, one goal was to keep backwards 
compatibility with developers' workflows. For this, a Skara bot was 
created which generates webrevs, as closely aligned to the original ksh 
webrev script as possible.

Now I believe all developers are well into the Skara/GitHub way of doing 
things, and I have not heard someone refer to webrevs in a long time. So 
my first question is:

* Is it still relevant to continue let the Skara bots generate webrevs?

I personally have only used webrevs on a few occasions the last years, 
and those have all been when the GitHub diff viewer was inadequate. For 
instance, the webrev bot uses a more aggressive method of letting git 
match files that have been simultaneously moved and edited, and the 
Frames view align code side-by-side which is sometimes much more helpful 
than the line-by-line view in GitHub. So, my second question is:

* Should we keep the idea of a bot that generates diff pages, but 
instead of mimicking the old webrev script, tailor it to cover up for 
those use cases where GitHub falls short?

I'm not suggesting we should immediately turn of the webrev bot, so if 
you still like and use it, there is no cause for panic. I'm just trying 
to get a sense of how people feel about the future for webrevs.

/Magnus



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