Reviewer/submitter suggestions based on a change's target repo and the set of files it modifies

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Developers in my organization would benefit from a Gerrit feature that'd 
suggest appropriate reviewers and submitters for a change submitted to Gerrit.

This would help reduce the latency of a change getting reviewed and submitted, 
as the system could be configured to help change authors pick the right domain 
experts for review and the appropriate architects or managers for submission.  
This is especially true for repos that span multiple modules and each 
sub-directory having their own experts and owners.

The way I thought this could work would be as follows:

1) Admins could configure lists of reviewers and submitters for each repo.  
This would be a list of (regexp,[reviewers]) tuples so that you could do 
something like this:

(assume Android's frameworks/base.git repo structure 
http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/frameworks/base.git;a=tree;h=refs/head
s/master;hb=master)

- (base.git/graphics/*, [gfx_expert1, gfx_expert2>,...])
- (base.git/services/audioflinger/*, [audio_guy1, audio_guy2, ...])

2) A developer submits a change to Gerrit.  Gerrit looks at the above 
reviewer/submitter match list to see it can suggest a reviewer or a submitter 
for the change based on the target repo and the files the patch touches.  A 
list of names is shown in the UI in the order of relevance (i.e., the primary 
reviewer is listed first) and the developer can click on the names to add the 
suggested reviewer on the reviewers list.

We've tried different ways of getting this done via documenting similar 
information on an intranet wiki page.  However, it's not convenient to look up 
the wiki page on every change upload.  This would also help Gerrit admins to 
load balance review and submit work better if they detect a single 
submitter/reviewer is getting too many review requests.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by jjhel...@gmail.com on 27 Oct 2010 at 5:31

• Blocked on: #971

[GoogleCodeExporter]

This sounds like a good feature. We've discussed something similar within our 
$DAYJOB, however I believe that this is not the task of a Gerrit admin, but 
rather the task of the individual reviewer.
Simply put, the watch function should be tweaked with the similar regexp-option 
you mention in your bug, allowing the reviewer to subscribe partially to 
changes in a git, and perhaps even allow a new change to the path in question 
to have their name automatically added as a reviewer to the change (like you 
suggest).
This would let the gerrit admin off the hook of configuring this for 2000 
developers, and it would allow more freedom to the developer herself. She can 
even reconfigure her watch-settings while on vacation..

Original comment by fredrik....@sonyericsson.com on 13 Dec 2010 at 3:32

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Needs the prolog engine to be sufficiently customizable.

Original comment by nas...@grainawi.org on 20 May 2011 at 8:02

• Changed state: Accepted

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I don't really think this is the job for the submit-rule engine. While it could 
kind-of-work with some extensions to it; it seems much better to extend the 
'Watch Projects' as mentioned in comment 1

Original comment by JBjo...@gmail.com on 25 Oct 2012 at 7:37