Re: [PATCH 1/1] MAINTAINERS: add a maintainer for the SPI NOR subsystem

[Boris Brezillon <boris.brezillon@free-electrons.com>]

On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 11:46:51 -0700
Brian Norris <computersforpeace@gmail.com> wrote:

> + others
> 
> On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 06:15:23PM +0200, Richard Weinberger wrote:
> > On 18.10.2016 17:55, Cyrille Pitchen wrote:  
> > > Le 18/10/2016 à 17:30, Richard Weinberger a écrit :  
> > >> On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 5:17 PM, Marek Vasut <marex@denx.de> wrote:  
> > >>> On 10/18/2016 04:58 PM, Cyrille Pitchen wrote:  
> > >>>> I would like to volunteer as a maintainer for the SPI NOR part of the MTD
> > >>>> subsystem.  
> 
> Awesome!
> 
> > >>>> Over the last months, a significant number of SPI NOR related patches have
> > >>>> been submitted, some of them have been reviewed, but very few have finally
> > >>>> been merged. Hence, the number of pending SPI NOR related patches continues
> > >>>> to increase over the time.  
> 
> Agreed, and sorry. But I guess the delays had the side effect of forcing
> peoples hands, instead of delaying the inevitable.
> 
> > >>>> Through my work on SPI NOR memories from many manufacturers over the last
> > >>>> two years, I've gained a solid understanding of this technology.
> > >>>> I've already helped by reviewing patches from other contributors on the
> > >>>> mailing list, and would like to help getting those patches integrated by
> > >>>> volunteering as a maintainer for this specific area.  
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> > >>>> Boris Brezillon has already stepped up as a maintainer for the NAND
> > >>>> sub-subsystem in MTD, and the SPI NOR sub-subsystem could be handled in
> > >>>> the same way: I would be reviewing patches touching this area, collecting
> > >>>> them and sending pull requests to Brian Norris.  
> > >>
> > >> I'd suggest you send pull requests directly to Linus.
> > >> Same for NAND.  
> 
> I could go with either method I suppose, but I don't personally like the
> idea of splitting out the various bits of MTD into *completely*
> independent lines of development. As long as someone (not necessarily
> me) can manage pulling the sub-subsystems together, I think it would
> make sense to have 1 PR for Linus for non-UBI/FS MTD changes.
> 
> > >>>> Signed-off-by: Cyrille Pitchen <cyrille.pitchen@atmel.com>  
> > >>>
> > >>> Let me know if you need co-maintainer.  
> > >>
> > >> +1  
> 
> +1, I think I've not-so-subtly suggested this to Marek previously.

Okay, that's all great news!
You can add my ack after adding Marek as a co-maintainer.

> 
> > >> While we are here, what about forming a MTD maintainer team?
> > >> This concept works very well for other subsystems.
> > >>  
> > > 
> > > I totally agree with you so if Marek and you volunteer as well, your help
> > > will be precious!  
> > 
> > Well, my SPI-NOR fu is not strong. And UBI/UBIFS keeps me busy.
> > But if Brian likes the idea of having a MTD maintainer team I'll offer my help.  
> 
> I think a MTD maintainer team would be good to try, and I think it might
> help to resolve my above complaint; a maintainer team could help to make
> sure that everything can be coordinated in one tree + pull request,
> without adding too many extra points of failure (e.g., so we don't have
> awesome SPI NOR and NAND trees get bogged down by a slow MTD pull).
> 
> Random thoughts:
> 
>  Does it make sense to still use infradead.org? We'd need to add a few
>  users there.
> 
>  Trust? I have met most of you in person, but not all, and I don't have
>  signed keys from all of you. I don't know what the best way to get a
>  group-writeable repo with credentials for all of you that we can trust.
>  (FWIW, neither Artem nor David met me, but they saw it fit to grant me
>  infradead.org access ;) )
> 
>  Coordination: how do we avoid stepping on each other's toes? We'd have
>  to definitely 100% kill 'git push -f' and 'git rebase'. Also, would
>  patchwork help or hurt us here? I think Boris and I have been sort of
>  using it, but it's still got a pretty good backlog (partly real --
>  i.e., the cause for this thread; and partly artificial, due to
>  accounting).

I really think we should keep separate trees for the spi-nor and nand
sub-subsystems, and then do PRs. The question is, how do we agree that
a PR should be pulled in the MTD tree.

I guess we could have a simple rule like, if it's been reviewed by at
least X person (I guess 2 is acceptable), then we can merge it.

> 
>  What to do about mtd-utils.git? That's been languishing a bit, and it
>  has no release schedule. Maybe we want a plan for that too.

Richard and David had some plans for the mtd-utils repo, and I think
they already have the permissions to push things to this repo, so the
best solution is probably to officially promote them maintainers of
mtd-utils.

> 
> BTW, will anybody be at Linux Plumbers? I plan to be there in a few
> weeks. And something tells me dwmw2 will be there.

Unfortunately I won't attend plumbers :-(.