Re: [Qemu-devel] We need more reviewers/maintainers!!

[Anthony Liguori]

On 03/12/2012 06:32 PM, Andreas Färber wrote:
> Am 12.03.2012 22:18, schrieb Anthony Liguori:
> > On 03/12/2012 04:12 PM, Stefan Weil wrote:
> > > Am 12.03.2012 21:27, schrieb Anthony Liguori:
> > > > On 03/12/2012 03:12 PM, Stefan Weil wrote:
> > > > > [...] There a many examples of
> > > > > urgent patches (= patches which fix broken builds) which take
> > > > > several days even when they were reviewed before they finally
> > > > > are committed.
> > > >
> > > > Can you be specific? [...]
> > >
> > > I don't mean w32 patches only. The last build break was for ppc hosts
> > > (e04b28996110bd6acfc059e9f2c8c5aba5119a46, it took more than 5 days),
> > > but I remember also situations were x86 was broken more than
> > > a day.
> > >
> > > A selection of older patches which fixed build and the time it took
> > > from creation to commit:
> > >
> > > 6148b23d69444a300710db0c53f6c53b7f3c8067 (kvm ppcm 3 days)
> > > 1ecf47bf0a091700e45f1b7d1f5ad85abc0acd22 (w32, 2 days)
> >
> > So both of these platforms have maintainers that can do PULL requests
> > for issues like this.
> [snip]
>
> You're missing the point here: There usually *are* patches quickly, but
> they often don't get applied to qemu.git as fast. Often there are even
> two or three people sending build fixes concurrently. Do you really need
> a PULL for a single patch that affects everyone?

A PULL is just as good as a push.  There's a slight lag in a PULL, but generally 
it should be pretty quick.

> Take Blue's recent target-ppc fix
> 9d4df9c02866f39d3eef105033091f367cc7c29e for example: After applying
> patches on day one of FOSDEM he posted a -Werror fix, it got confirmed
> by me and Alex but wasn't applied until a week later, because apparently
> no other committer dared to apply Blue's patch despite SoB and acks and
> people reporting the issue... Not happy.
> No doubt Alex is to blame for not catching that issue in his ppc queue,
> but asking Alex as submaintainer to submit a PULL for a single patch
> posted by Blue as committer seems overly complicated to me! ;)

I think this is a good demonstration of what the problem is.  Unclear 
responsibility.  I'm pretty sure that Blue thought that Alex would handle the 
patch.  I'm pretty sure that Alex thought Blue would handle the patch.

If we start saying that, Alex "owns" ppc except for things that are "important" 
like a build breakage, then we get into the ugly definition of what's important 
and what's not important.

So yes, if the build breakage is limited to PPC, and came in through the PPC 
tree, I'd expect the fix to also come through the PPC tree.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori