From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:37510) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XgVmm-0001Gl-DB for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 21 Oct 2014 05:31:29 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XgVmg-0003gS-TL for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 21 Oct 2014 05:31:24 -0400 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([209.132.183.28]:40062) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XgVmg-0003gJ-Em for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Tue, 21 Oct 2014 05:31:18 -0400 From: Markus Armbruster References: <1413796790-30579-1-git-send-email-armbru@redhat.com> <20141020141548.GA11062@redhat.com> <20141020190358.GA12441@redhat.com> Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 11:31:12 +0200 In-Reply-To: <20141020190358.GA12441@redhat.com> (Michael S. Tsirkin's message of "Mon, 20 Oct 2014 22:03:58 +0300") Message-ID: <87vbnddb1b.fsf@blackfin.pond.sub.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] get_maintainer.pl: Default to --no-git-fallback List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: "Michael S. Tsirkin" Cc: Peter Maydell , QEMU Developers "Michael S. Tsirkin" writes: > On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 03:19:52PM +0100, Peter Maydell wrote: >> On 20 October 2014 15:15, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote: >> > On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 03:04:44PM +0100, Peter Maydell wrote: >> >> On 20 October 2014 10:19, Markus Armbruster 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).