[tibbar]

Reviewing 22,000 lines of code, even from antirez, with this complex of a feature set and minimal PR description sounds like a nightmare. One starts to see why major open-source software like Postgres tends to be developed on a mailing list, with intermediate design decisions discussed by the community, separate patches for different related features, incremental review, and then a spaced release cadence.

[antirez]

The code is 5000 lines of code in total, comments included:

2000 lines the sparse array.

2000 lines the t_array commands and upper layer implementation.

~500 lines of AOF / RDB code.

All the other stuff is tests, JSON command descriptions, TRE library under "deps".

[SkyPuncher]

I might be the outlier, but this PR feels like heaven to review. It's a complete, all encompassing PR that I can work through with the entire context right in front of me.

If the initial development bar is relatively high, it's far, far easier to identify flaws and gaps when you have the whole thing in front of you all at once.

[fancy_pantser]

I think the point GP is making is this is a PR that smells like a solo dev working on their own project and not how a community-driven project adds major new functionality, although I'm sure there are docs and descriptions (or at least a discussion of tradeoffs and design decisions if not ADRs) are somewhere, but not linked handily to the PR. There is a lot of explanation in the blog post and PR, but it's unilateral-looking.

c.f. valkey and others

[antirez]

Redis was completely built in this way since the start. I believe this is a better way to create software. Compromise in design is, in my opinion, something to avoid: feedbacks are important, but often times a single person that studied a lot the problem and have design taste, can come up with a great solution. Mediating such solution, even among two stellar A and B solutions, will not produce a C soution that is better, since you can't produce such solution by interpolation. It is simpler to damage A and B. And: it is rare that in a big set of people all have stellar ideas, so you have to mediate, often, also with people having poor ideas. Not worth the effort for the way I'm wired. What works better for me is to provide hints about what I'm doing, then I receive feedbacks, and sometimes there are really great ideas in this feedbacks, and I incorporate the part I like.

[fancy_pantser]

Thanks, I think I'm all caught up now. The timeline is like this if I understand correctly: your successors (Yossi Gottlieb and Oran Agra) explicitly announced a new governance model in 2020, saying the project had "outgrown the BDFL-style of management" and that they wanted to "promote more teamwork and structure". With the relicensing in 2024, however, external contributors with five or more commits to Redis dropped to zero in the first six months (basically, community contribution collapsed). In late 2024, you came back in the role of "Redis evangelist" and a year ago there was an additional licensing change, adding AGPLv3 as an option (8.0's tri-license). So now redis has your steady hand on the wheel again.

I was confused because the last time I checked on things, it was still about fostering community input and advancement but not necessarily consensus. Things have tipped back in the original direction since then. I don't think "Redis was completely built in this way since the start" is completely accurate, but also the community effort under the new governance model never got very deeply entrenched while you were away.

[tibbar]

First of all, redis is amazing, and your 4 month development process speaks to the fact that you've already designed and verified correctness super thoroughly.

... just speaking as someone who sometimes has to review very long PRs sometimes, though, I feel like 25% is a roughly normal level of "signal to noise." 5,000 lines of core logic is a LOT, and the tests and dependencies do still need to be read.

EDIT: I feel like the problem, as a reviewer, is processing 4 months of intensive research/development and providing useful feedback. At that point, there's probably not much major input you can have into the core architecture or strategy, so you're probably not providing much more than a bugbot at that point.

[fancy_pantser]

I think where we went wrong in understanding this PR is in the assumption that it's designed to invite review because that's how a lot of other team- or community-driven projects work.

[derefr]

> At that point, there's probably not much major input you can have into the core architecture or strategy

Sure you can? In this concrete case, Redis is very "flat" — there's the data structure implementations, and there's the commands that use them. 1+N. You could have feedback about the data structure (i.e. whether it's optimal for the use-cases); or about any of the commands (i.e. not just their impls, but also whether they're the best core API surface to lock in long-term, or even whether they're worth including at all.)

Any given feedback would necessitate fairly limited rework to address, as you're either modifying the data structure (and its tests) or a command (and its tests and docs.)

[tibbar]

Fair point that there might be some functional changes you can suggest, but I continue to suspect that by the time this PR hit GitHub, all the most important decisions have already been finalized.

[epolanski]

Postgres and Redis are dramatically different projects with radically different stories, contributions and development team.

Virtually all major Redis features are a solo job of the post author.

By the way reviewers are paid good money for this and know the setup.

[tibbar]

Oh wow, I didn't realize that Redis is still mostly just authored by antirez! (My understanding is that he had left for some time and then returned to the project.) That is, honestly, pretty amazing. Well, redis is great and clearly it's worked out.