Re: [PATCH v2] MAINTAINERS: Document maintainers for xen/common/

[Tim Deegan <tim@xen.org>]

At 19:02 +0100 on 17 Sep (1442516564), Ian Jackson wrote:
> Tim Deegan writes ("Re: [PATCH v2] MAINTAINERS: Document maintainers for xen/common/"):
> > I would rather your v1 plus an appropriate change to get_maintainers.
> 
> I am happy to implement in get_maintainers whatever is decided.
> 
> At the moment there is one kind of fallback:
> 
> (i) `THE REST' gets CCd iff no file pointed to any other maintainer
> 
> What you may be proposing is a subtly different kind of fallback:
> 
> (ii) `REST OF THE HYPERVISOR' gets CCd iff the patch touches any files
>    in xen/ which do not have another maintainer

Right, I see.  Yes, that is what I was proposing, though thinking
about it I'm not so sure any more.  There seem to be three
possibilities -- filter everything per-file:

 for each file touched:
     M := 'normal' maintainers
     if M is empty and the file is in xen/, M := REST OF HYPERVISOR
     if M is empty, M := THE REST
     CCLIST += M

Filter xen/ per-file but leave THE REST as it is now:

 for each file touched:
     M := 'normal' maintainers
     if M is empty and the file is in xen/, M := REST OF HYPERVISOR
     CCLIST += M
 if CCLIST is empty, CCLIST := THE REST

or only use the fallbacks if nothing in the patch has a real
maintainer: 

 for each file touched:
     CCLIST += 'normal' maintainers
 if CCLIST is empty and any file is in xen/, CCLIST := REST OF HYPERVISOR
 if CCLIST is empty, CCLIST := THE REST

There's a tradeoff between how noisy it gets for the fallback
maintainers and wanting to make sure that someone relevant is always
CC'd.

I think on balance we can rely on the maintainers to ask for second
opinions if they find a patch that touches a lot of common code,
i.e. I prefer the third option.

Cheers,

Tim.