Is webrev generation still relevant?

[Chris Plummer]

I rely on it pretty heavily. It provides better context than 
side-by-side, and also makes it easy to find other relevant code in the 
file that might not show up in the diffs.

Chris

On 1/18/24 1:04 AM, Magnus Ihse Bursie wrote:
> 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
>