Topic on Talk:Gerrit/Privilege policy

Pair Programming Exception

4
Summary by DKinzler (WMF)

The fact that there were "four eyes" on the code should be documented on gerrit. That's the essential part.

TCipriani (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Under the bulleted exceptions to Merging without review, there is a point that "A commit in Gerrit may have two authors" mentioning "an owner and a reviewer who uploads and amendment"; however, there is no exception for pair programming explicitly. I am not sure how common this is for MediaWiki core and Extensions (cf: scope?), but it is common for several repos I work in.

That is, a patch could be written during a hangout/pairing session between two people, uploaded by one, and merged by the same. As a recommendation, it could contain a Co-Authored-By: snippet in the commit or two Signed-off-by: tags.

Jdforrester (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Isn't there a risk that pair-programmed code suffers from the same individual "group" think that we worry about for sole-author patches? Do we want to encourage the practice of pair-programmed code being merged by one of said pair?

TCipriani (WMF) (talkcontribs)

I think code review and pair programming both ensure that two people understand and endorse a particular patch. I view pair programming as a real-time review of code being written, whereas code review is asynchronous.

I think code review and pair programming are both equally subject to groupthink and/or power inequalities. I am unsure if one is more so than the other.

DKinzler (WMF) (talkcontribs)

I agree that pair programming is kind of a live review process. There is no good way to represent shared authorship on gerrit, so one person should upload the patch, and the other can approve it right away. MAybe it would be nice to mention the fact that the patch was done in a pair programming session, but I don't think it's necessary.

In any case, the fact that there were "four eyes" on the code should be documented on gerrit. That's the essential part.