Gerrit ESC Meeting Minutes of the 28th of January 2026 Change-Id: I7681890a1771bc83c7015e175242a929b87b117d
diff --git a/_posts/2026-01-28-esc-minutes.md b/_posts/2026-01-28-esc-minutes.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..58449bf --- /dev/null +++ b/_posts/2026-01-28-esc-minutes.md
@@ -0,0 +1,83 @@ +--- +title: "Gerrit ESC Meeting Minutes, January 28th, 2026" +tags: esc +keywords: esc minutes +permalink: 2026-01-28-esc-minutes.html +summary: "Minutes from the ESC meeting held on January 28th, 2026" +hide_sidebar: true +hide_navtoggle: true +toc: true +--- + +**Participants**: Edwin Kempin [EK], Luca Milanesio [LM], Saša Živkov [SZ] + +**Next meeting**: February 25th, 2026 + +## Executive Summary + +[LM] proposed a release plan for version 3.14 starting at the end of February, which was +later suggested to be delayed by a month to align with a meetup and allow Thomas and David +Ostrovski to finalize the migration to Bazel mode. [LM] also raised the change ID duplication +issue, noting it is increasing, particularly with AI-driven workflows; [EK] confirmed Google +also recently changed indexing for human users to be asynchronous to improve user experience, +and [SZ] and [EK] see the issue less frequently. +[LM], [SZ], and [EK] discussed the potential for calculating the change ID on the server and +concluded that although the duplication issue is concerning, it is not a current priority +over other issues like concurrency problems with the ref-table. + +## Release Plan for 3.14 + +* **Draft Plan:** [LM] drafted the release plan for version 3.14, initially proposing a + start date at the end of February. + +* **Bazel Migration:** It was decided to check with Matias regarding the status of the migration + to `bzlmod` (managed by David Ostrovski and Thomas), as this could serve as a major feature for + the release. + +## Technical Issue: Change ID Duplication + +### The Problem + +Luca raised an [issue](https://issues.gerritcodereview.com/issues/313935024) where Gerrit +generates the Change ID on the client side. +This causes duplication problems when indexing is set to asynchronous or has high latency. + +A similar duplication problem may happen with the +[change number duplication issue](https://issues.gerritcodereview.com/issues/391394129) where +the same change number is assigned to two changes on different projects. + +* **Frequency:** [SZ] and [EK] noted they see this issue less frequently. However, [EK] + mentioned that Google recently switched to asynchronous indexing for human users + performing git pushes to improve the User Experience (UX). All the web-ui + interactions caused already asynchronous indexing. + +* **AI Workflow Impact:** [LM] observed an increase in clients reporting this issue, particularly + those adopting AI-driven workflows which significantly increase push traffic. + +### Mitigation & Solutions + +[SZ] stated that a fix cannot be prioritized immediately as it likely requires updates to the global +ref-db in a multi-master scenario. However, there are other issues to be solved on v3.14, +such as [ref-table concurrency](https://issues.gerritcodereview.com/issues/460019541), +are currently higher priority. + +* **Risk Assessment:** [LM] agreed that while the issue is concerning regarding AI adoption, the + probability of occurrence remains relatively low, in less than 0.1% of the cases. + +* **Long-term solution:** Solving this fundamentally would require a design document, potentially moving + Change ID calculation from the client to the server, used in the ref-name of the change instead of + the change number. + +* **Current Mitigation:** The preferred solution (implemented by Google) is to configure + indexing as **asynchronous for human users** (to reduce push times) but keep it + **synchronous for agents/bots** to prevent duplication. + +## Timeline Adjustment & Meetup + +* **Schedule Shift:** Luca suggested delaying the 3.14 release start by one month, to allow a proper + fix of the ref-table implementation and finalise the Bazel migration. + +* **Sunnyvale Meetup:** The new timeline aligns with the + [upcoming meetup in Sunnyvale](https://www.meetup.com/gerritmeets/events/312898799) + on the 19th of February. This allows for a preview of version 3.14 (currently in master) while + accommodating the migration work.