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Message-ID: <9dda83cb-53e5-b905-31b0-adb0708bf9af@linaro.org>
Date:   Wed, 28 Sep 2022 13:21:36 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PATCH] Documentation/process: Add text to indicate supporters
 should be mailed
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To:     Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>, corbet@lwn.net,
        konstantin@linuxfoundation.org, krzysztof.kozlowski@linaro.org,
        linux-doc@vger.kernel.org
Cc:     linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
References: <20220928003006.230103-1-bryan.odonoghue@linaro.org>
 <9df735b7-2963-9fca-aa7e-6ae993e8b948@leemhuis.info>
 <9a321c25-32ba-6ea0-67a0-07617a1131b2@linaro.org>
 <ef8bd881-50aa-f317-981a-ef7e57a10b1b@leemhuis.info>
From:   Bryan O'Donoghue <bryan.odonoghue@linaro.org>
In-Reply-To: <ef8bd881-50aa-f317-981a-ef7e57a10b1b@leemhuis.info>
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On 28/09/2022 13:02, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> On 28.09.22 13:48, Bryan O'Donoghue wrote:
>> On 28/09/2022 05:34, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
>>> On 28.09.22 02:30, Bryan O'Donoghue wrote:
>>>> Recently when submitting a yaml change I found that I had omitted the
>>>> maintainer whose tree the change needed to go through.
>>>>
>>>> The reason for that is the path in MAINTAINERS is marked as Supported
>>>> not
>>>> Maintained. Reading MAINTAINERS we see quote:
>>>>
>>>>              Supported:   Someone is actually paid to look after this.
>>>>              Maintained:  Someone actually looks after it.
>>>>
>>>> The current submitting-patches.rst only says to mail maintainers
>>>> though not
>>>> supporters. When we run scripts/get_maintainer.pl anybody who is
>>>> denoted a
>>>> paid maintainer will appear as a supporter.
>>>>
>>>> Let's add some text to the submitting-patches.rst to indicate that
>>>> supporters should similarly be mailed so that you can't do as I did and
>>>> mail every maintainer get_maintainer.pl tells you to, without actually
>>>> mailing the one supporter you need to.
>> [...]
>>> Which leads to two other question: Are there any other places that might
>>> benefit from such a clarification? Or would it be even make sense to
>>> change the format of MAINTAINERS to avoid the problem in the first
>>> place? Maybe something like "Maintained(v)" (Someone volunteered to look
>>> after it in spare hours.) and "Maintained(p)" (Someone is actually paid
>>> to look after this.). Ahh, no, that doesn't look good. But you get the
>>> idea.
>>
>> We could update get_maintainer to print out something else
>> such as
> 
> I really like the idea of just changing get_maintainer, but also...
> 
>> scripts/get_maintainer.pl
>> Documentation/devicetree/bindings/mfd/qcom,spmi-pmic.yaml
>>
>> Andy Gross <agross@kernel.org> (maintainer:ARM/QUALCOMM SUPPORT)
>> Bjorn Andersson <bjorn.andersson@linaro.org> (maintainer:ARM/QUALCOMM
>> SUPPORT)
>> Konrad Dybcio <konrad.dybcio@somainline.org> (reviewer:ARM/QUALCOMM
>> SUPPORT)
>> Lee Jones <lee@kernel.org> (maintainer-supporter:MULTIFUNCTION DEVICES
>> (MFD))
>>
>> or say
>>
>> scripts/get_maintainer.pl
>> Documentation/devicetree/bindings/mfd/qcom,spmi-pmic.yaml
>> Andy Gross <agross@kernel.org> (maintainer:ARM/QUALCOMM SUPPORT)
>> Bjorn Andersson <bjorn.andersson@linaro.org> (maintainer:ARM/QUALCOMM
>> SUPPORT)
>> Konrad Dybcio <konrad.dybcio@somainline.org> (reviewer:ARM/QUALCOMM
>> SUPPORT)
>> Lee Jones <lee@kernel.org> (supporting-maintainer:MULTIFUNCTION DEVICES
>> (MFD))
>>
>> it would be less churn but, I still think we would need to update the
>> documentation to be very explicit that "supporting-maintainer or
>> maintainer" needs to be emailed with your patch so that sufficiently
>> talented idiots such as myself, know who to mail.
>>
>> Although thinking about it we would be introducing yet another term
>> "supporting-maintainer" to which people would say "what is that"
> 
> ...agree with this.
> 
>> Feels a little less confusing to me to leave supporter as-is and just
>> document expectations for patch submission better.
> 
> Hmm, how about this:
> 
> scripts/get_maintainer.pl
> Documentation/devicetree/bindings/mfd/qcom,spmi-pmic.yaml
> Lee Jones <lee@kernel.org> (maintainer[supported]:MULTIFUNCTION DEVICES
> (MFD))
> Andy Gross <agross@kernel.org> (maintainer[volunteer]:ARM/QUALCOMM SUPPORT)
> Bjorn Andersson <bjorn.andersson@linaro.org>
> (maintainer[volunteer]:ARM/QUALCOMM SUPPORT)
> Konrad Dybcio <konrad.dybcio@somainline.org> (reviewer:ARM/QUALCOMM SUPPORT)
> 
> Not totally sure about this myself. And there is a risk that any such
> change might break scripts that rely on the current approach used by
> scripts/get_maintainer.pl :-/

So it feels to me like the right thing to do is change get_maintainer 
and accompanying documentation but, I'll wait to hear back from Jonathan.

---
bod