Re: Docs for base maintainer expectations?

[Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>]

On Mon, 10 Jul 2023 20:06:56 +0100 Conor Dooley wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 10, 2023 at 11:52:39AM -0700, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> > do we have any docs describing what's expected from folks stepping up
> > to maintain (small-ish) parts of the kernel like a driver or a protocol?
> > 
> > Experienced developers / maintainers differ like the beautiful
> > snowflakes that we are, but outsiders have much less familiarity 
> > with the landscape, and frankly sometimes much less interest in
> > participating once they code lands.
> > 
> > Which makes we wonder if a simple list of responsibilities would be
> > useful as a baseline.  
> 
> > I haven't spotted anything in Docs/process but
> > perhaps someone has a local version for their subsystem?  
> 
> Given I figure you did this on with a -rc1 based tree, which would mean
> that what I wrote probably does not fit the bill, but I tried to do
> something along these lines with
> https://docs.kernel.org/process/maintainer-soc.html
> for which my target audience was people picking up maintenance of
> DT/soc drivers, which I hope there'll be a few of in RISC-V land soon...
> 
> I suggested adding things to it, like putting the trees in linux-next
> etc, but review feedback suggested that was unsuited to a subsystem
> specific document.

Thanks for the pointer! I haven't read it before because I assumed
it'll describe workflow and suggestions for SoC sub-tree (which it
does?) I was thinking about something way more basic, like "you are
expected to reply to bug reports", "you are expected to investigate
syzbot problems" etc. :(

IOW the SoC guide reads more like "how to get your code accepted" rather
than "what are the externally-facing responsibilities of a maintainer".