From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from snark.thyrsus.com (snark.tuxedo.org [207.106.50.26]) by dsl2.external.hp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4DCC1482A for ; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 08:20:28 -0600 (MDT) Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 10:19:51 -0400 From: "Eric S. Raymond" To: Alan Cox Cc: "Albert D. Cahalan" , Matthew Wilcox , james rich , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, parisc-linux@parisc-linux.org Subject: Re: [parisc-linux] Re: OK, let's try cleaning up another nit. Is anyone paying attention? Message-ID: <20010420101951.A6011@thyrsus.com> Reply-To: esr@thyrsus.com References: <20010420095302.A5674@thyrsus.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii In-Reply-To: ; from alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk on Fri, Apr 20, 2001 at 03:03:06PM +0100 List-ID: Alan Cox : > People send batches of small fixes to Linus or to me. So for example > the S/390 folks send me things like 'fix the mm layer to match the > changes in 2.4.3' and 'Update the DASD storage driver'. Each of > which fixes one thing or one set of things and is easy to check on > its own I'll continue asking stupid questions, then. Like, under this system how can either you or the port maintainers maintain a good representation of how far out of sync they are with the main tree? The implied workflow (developers in general, up to port maintainers, up to you and Linus) makes both technological and sociological sense. It kind of reminds me of Anglo-Norman feudalism post-1066 ("No lord without land, no land without a lord."). There are a couple of funny edge cases that it doesn't seem to handle well, though. One is the kind I'm bumping into right now, where somebody legitimately needs to make small (almost trivial) changes scattered all through the tree. Another is the case where a piece of code that needs to be changed doesn't have an active maintainer for a third party like me to go to. What's the neighborly way to deal with these? -- Eric S. Raymond "The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." -- Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-188