Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC 00/14] MAINTAINERS cleanups - please read

[Peter Maydell]

On 16 April 2012 17:03, Andreas Färber <address@hidden> wrote:
> Am 16.04.2012 18:00, schrieb Anthony Liguori:
>> On 04/16/2012 09:31 AM, Andreas Färber wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> Sparked by conversations with Anthony and the discussion on a recent
>>> KVM call,
>>> I've started overhauling our MAINTAINERS file.
>>>
>>> Patches 1-5 fix syntax issues.
>>>
>>> Patch 6 documents our orphaned stable trees, as requested by Anthony.
>>>
>>> Patch 7 drops the orphaned and by now completely busted darwin-user
>>> emulation.
>>>
>>> Apparently we have unwritten eligibility criteria for new maintainers
>>> in terms
>>> of qemu-devel participation and patch handling quality, but no formal
>>> mechanism
>>> to handle replacing lost maintainers.
>>>
>>> The current practice has become for Anthony to expect people listed in a
>>> MAINTAINERS section with S: Maintained to handle patches in that area
>>> themselves
>>> and to supply a [PULL] request to get those changes into qemu.git.
>>> This has the downside that patches falling into an area, where a
>>> maintainer
>>> is listed but not responding, simply bitrot on the list.
>>
>> I think we ought to aggressively downgrade subsystems if this is really
>> a problem.  Unfortunately, it's hard to judge whether this is a problem
>> until someone complains about a specific subsystem.
>>
>>> Patches 8-11 therefore propose to upgrade some actively maintained
>>> sections
>>> to Maintained to formalize the Maintained vs. Odd Fixes semantics:
>>
>>> Maintained means PULLs from maintainer expected.
>>
>> Yes.  More specifically, if something is Maintained, I would expect the
>> patch to always come in through that specific tree.
>>
>>> Odd Fixes means Reviewed-by/Acked-by or committer's gut feeling is
>>> sufficient.
>>
>> Yes.  Odd Fixes and below means the patch is "fair game" but that the
>> listed M: probably ought to at least be consulted.
>
> The current status descriptions seem to be a copy from Linux. Could you
> address Kevin's comment by proposing a change to the descriptions in our
> copy?

Here's my stab at it:

           Supported:   Someone is actually paid to look after this. This
                        is the same as Maintained (see below) but you might
                        have a greater chance of faster response times.
           Maintained:  Someone actually looks after it. The maintainer
                        will have a git subtree for this area and patches
                        are expected to go through it. Bug reports will
                        generally be investigated.
           Odd Fixes:   It has a maintainer but they don't have time to do
                        much other than throw the odd patch in. Patches are
                        applied directly to master; there is no subtree,
                        and no requirement for an Ack from the maintainer
                        for a patch to be applied. Bug reports without
                        reasonable quality patches attached are likely to
                        go unfixed.
           Orphan:      No current maintainer. Send patches to qemu-devel;
                        persistence may be required to get something reviewed
                        and committed, especially if it's a large change.
           Obsolete:    Old code. Something tagged obsolete generally means
                        it has been replaced by a better system and you
                        should be using that.

(I dropped the parenthetical about becoming a maintainer of an orphan
area; if we want to keep that I think an expanded section about how
to demonstrate that you might be capable of the job, how/when to add
sections for new code/drivers/boards, etc would be more useful.)

-- PMM