Is webrev generation still relevant?

[Pavel Rappo]

We have to be careful here. The reason why we don't hear about webrev _might_ not be because people don't use it, but because everyone who uses it is satisfied with how Skara does webrev.

FWIW, I rarely, if ever, look at PRs outside of my IDE.

-Pavel

> On 18 Jan 2024, at 10:32, Lindenmaier, Goetz <goetz.lindenmaier at sap.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I think this can be removed. At least no one at SAP uses it.
> 
> Best regards, Goetz.
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: jdk-dev <jdk-dev-retn at openjdk.org> On Behalf Of Magnus Ihse Bursie
>> Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2024 10:04 AM
>> To: jdk-dev at openjdk.org
>> Subject: Is webrev generation still relevant?
>> 
>> 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
>