Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Wed, 30 Jan 2002 20:44:18 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Wed, 30 Jan 2002 20:44:07 -0500 Received: from [208.29.163.248] ([208.29.163.248]:63160 "HELO warden.diginsite.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ; Wed, 30 Jan 2002 20:43:38 -0500 From: David Lang To: Stuart Young Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Daniel Egger , Linus Torvalds Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 17:42:56 -0800 (PST) Subject: Re: A modest proposal -- We need a patch penguin In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20020131115023.02652d60@mail.amc.localnet> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Eric posted a proposal to split the maintainers info across all directories/files sometime last year and got shouted down to the point of not mentioning it anymore (which as we know takes quite a bit for him :-) does someone want to dig up that proposal and recirculate it rather then starting from scratch again? David Lang On Thu, 31 Jan 2002, Stuart Young wrote: > Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 12:16:29 +1100 > From: Stuart Young > To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > Cc: Daniel Egger , Linus Torvalds > Subject: Re: A modest proposal -- We need a patch penguin > > At 02:13 PM 30/01/02 +0100, Daniel Egger wrote: > >Am Mit, 2002-01-30 um 00.50 schrieb Linus Torvalds: > > > > > Or look at USB: I get the USB patches from Greg, and he gets them from > > > various different people. Johannes Erdfelt is the maintainer for uhci.c, > > > and he sends them to Greg, not to me. > > > >What about creating a small document that states who's the correct > >recipient for a subsystem? This would prevent dotzends of questions > >like "Where do I send my patches?" and turn them into a RTFF. > > A reworking of MAINTAINERS could be beneficial and help achieve this. > > Linus mentioned that he prefers to look at the code to see who to talk to. > Others have mentioned this may be nice, but makes it hard to get some sort > of overall view, plus since programmers can be inconsistent in stuff like > this, it may not always happen. How about we turn the problem upside down, > and figure out how to get the code easily referenced in MAINTAINERS? > > What I'm thinking is that we could add (multiple?) lines into MAINTAINERS > that specify the actual FILES in the kernel (in reference to linux/) that > someone works on or maintains. We don't have to list every file (wildcards, > regex's, etc, can work too), plus you can list the maintainers of various > areas of the code (such as generic maintainers of all the files under a > part of the kernel file tree) by just listing what directories they > control. Something so that it's dead simple to extract who maintains this file. > > Here's a possible example: > > Say I'm looking at the SiS/Trident Audio Driver, and I have a patch I want > to send to a maintainer. The file I'm working on is: > > linux/drivers/sound/trident.* > > If I could easily search MAINTAINERS for who maintains this file, I'm made. > If I can't find that, I start trimming the search (to say > linux/drivers/sound/, which would be the sound maintainer). > > If we say add an F: field to maintainers (at the end of the maintainers > record), you can easily do things like... > > grep -B 10 "F: linux/drivers/sound/trident" /usr/src/linux/MAINTAINERS > > ...and get some sort of results (-B is "before context, which displays > lines before the found line, and is quite useful in this sort of situation) > that help. This is just a quick and dirty example, and I'm sure someone > could easily write a small script that could parse the output better, do > things like automatically cut the search back till it finds a match, etc. > > This could also be used to figure out a tree of who does what, which is > probably not a bad idea. > > Just an idea of course. *grin* > > > Stuart Young - sgy@amc.com.au > (aka Cefiar) - cefiar1@optushome.com.au > > [All opinions expressed in the above message are my] > [own and not necessarily the views of my employer..] > > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ > - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/