Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] checkpatch: warn about missing MAINTAINERS file changes

[Markus Armbruster]

Peter Maydell <address@hidden> writes:

> On 16 April 2018 at 15:11, Markus Armbruster <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Peter Maydell <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> On 12 March 2018 at 13:18, Stefan Hajnoczi <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>> Warn if files are added/renamed/deleted without MAINTAINERS file
>>>> changes.  This has helped me in Linux and we could benefit from this
>>>> check in QEMU.
>>>>
>>>> This patch is a manual cherry-pick of Linux commit
>>>> 13f1937ef33950b1112049972249e6191b82e6c9 ("checkpatch: emit a warning on
>>>> file add/move/delete") by Joe Perches <address@hidden>.
>>>>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <address@hidden>
>>>> ---
>>>
>>> Unfortunately the patch doesn't magically cause maintainers
>>> to appear for the new files :-)
>>
>> Fortunately, the patch can get new files non-magically rejected unless a
>> maintainers appears :)
>
> I think that "author of code lists themselves in MAINTAINERS
> but then doesn't in practice do anything" is not really much
> better (and arguably worse) than "code has no listed maintainer".

Having our tooling flag new and moved files for a possible MAINTAINERS
update need not mean adding J. Random Codeslinger to MAINTAINERS.  It
should make us stop and think.

If the kernel guys can do that, why can't we?