Is webrev generation still relevant?

[Thomas Stüfe]

+1 for webrevs. Same reasons as others have stated.

But also, I think preserving patches beyond the confines of Github is
needed to make sense of discussions in the ML archive.

..Thomas

On Thu, Jan 18, 2024 at 10:04 AM Magnus Ihse Bursie <
magnus.ihse.bursie at oracle.com> 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
>
>
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