Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] get_maintainer.pl: Default to --no-git-fallback

[Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>]

"Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com> writes:

> On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 03:19:52PM +0100, Peter Maydell wrote:
>> On 20 October 2014 15:15, Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com> wrote:
>> > On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 03:04:44PM +0100, Peter Maydell wrote:
>> >> On 20 October 2014 10:19, Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com> wrote:
>> >> > Contributors rely on this script to find maintainers to copy.  The
>> >> > script falls back to git when no exact MAINTAINERS pattern matches.
>> >> > When that happens, recent contributors get copied, which tends not be
>> >> > particularly useful.  Some contributors find it even annoying.
>> >> >
>> >> > Flip the default to "don't fall back to git".  Use --git-fallback to
>> >> > ask it to fall back to git.
>> 
>> >> Good idea.
>> 
>> > What do you want to happen in this case?
>> 
>> It should mail the people who are actually maintainers,
>> not anybody who happened to touch the code in the last
>> year.
>
> Right but as often as not there's no data about that
> in MAINTAINERS.

The way to fix that is finding maintainers, not scatter-shooting patches
to random contributors in the vague hope of hitting someone who cares.

>> > I'm yet to see contributors who are annoyed but we
>> > can always blacklist specific people.
>> 
>> At the moment I just don't use get_maintainers.pl at
>> all because I tried it a few times and it just cc'd
>> a bunch of irrelevant people...
>> 
>> I suspect anybody using it at the moment is either
>> using the --no-git-fallback flag or trimming the
>> cc list a lot.
>> 
>> thanks
>> -- PMM
>
> I'm using it: sometimes with --no-git-fallback, sometimes without.

I'm using it, but I absolutely want to know when it falls back to git,
because then I want to cheack and trim or ignore its output every single
time.

> IIUC the default is to have up to 5 people on the Cc list
> (--git-max-maintainers).
> It's not like it adds 200 random people, is it?
>
> Anyway experienced contributors can figure it out IMHO.

Experienced contributors can figure out --git-fallback, too.

What we see is contributors, especially less experienced ones, copying
whatever get_maintainers.pl spits out, because they have no idea what
get_maintainers.pl actually does.

> Question in my mind is what do we want a casual contributor
> to do if there's no one listed in MAINTAINERS.
> "Look in MAINTAINERS, if not there, look in git log"
> sounds very reasonable to me, better than "CC no one".

But that's not what we do!  We do "copy whatever get_maintainers.pl
coughs up", which boils down to "use MAINTAINERS, if not there, grab
some random victims from git-log".

Perhaps we'd get slightly better results if get_maintainers.pl told its
users clearly about the two kinds of output it may produce: maintainers
(must be copied on patches), and recent contributors (you're in trouble;
copying some of them may or may not help).