[Development] abandoning stale changes on gerrit

[Oswald Buddenhagen]

On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 09:19:22AM +0100, Jedrzej Nowacki wrote:
> On Friday 1. February 2013 14.34.26 Oswald Buddenhagen wrote:
> > i'd rather have a bot post a gentle ping after the proposed 3-month
> > timeout, and then follow through within a few (four?) weeks.
> 
> That is a bit destructive. The change would be updated and filters
> would not work correctly.
> 
yes, i have been thinking about this problem already. i can see two ways
out:
- introduce "silent comments" which don't update the timestamp. this is
  a bit of additional implementation work, though fairly easy.
- make the bot mail the owners directly. this is a bit nasty, because
  there is no public trace of the activity, and none of the reviewers
  is implicitly prompted to chime in on the matter.
  
> It is better to close them immediately, if you really need to.
>
just close with an invitation to re-open or transition to deferred ...
well, it's a possibility. not sure i like it.