Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Pull network and Patch Acceptance Consistency

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>]

On Thu, 2019-06-06 at 17:58 +0200, Greg KH wrote:
> > 2) Patch Acceptance Consistency: At the moment, we have very
> > different acceptance criteria for patches into the various
> > maintainer trees.  Some of these differences are due to deeply held
> > stylistic beliefs, but some could be more streamlined to give a
> > more consistent experience to beginners who end up doing batch
> > fixes which cross trees and end up more confused than anything
> > else.  I'm not proposing to try and unify our entire submission
> > process, because that would never fly, but I was
> > thinking we could get a few sample maintainer trees to give their
> > criteria and then see if we could get any streamlining.  For
> > instance, SCSI has a fairly weak "match the current driver" style
> > requirement, a reasonably strong get someone else to review it
> > requirement and the usual good change log and one patch per
> > substantive change requirement.  Other subsystems look similar
> > without the review requirement, some have very strict stylistic
> > requirements (reverse christmas tree, one variable definition per
> > line, etc).  As I said, the goal wouldn't be to  beat up on the
> > unusual requirements but to see if we could agree some global
> > baselines that would at least make submission more uniform.
> 
> I thought Dan's "maintainer document" was going to help resolve
> things like this, both putting in writing just what those rules were,
> as well as help point out where things might be going too far in one
> direction or another in a much easier way, as they could be compared.

Well, um, I can't really comment on a document that doesn't yet exist. 
However, I can note that the best kernel process documents describe
what we actually do (mostly because attempting to impose additional
processes by fiat [or by document] really doesn't go over well) and
that's orthogonal to what I'm proposing: I'm proposing that we examine
critically what we currently do and see if there aren't any more areas
where we could strive for greater consistency and uniformity. 
Certainly, if Dan's doc exists by KS time it could be a useful input,
but to effect change in this area requires discussion and agreement by
the franchise holders (i.e. the maintainers) which is what I'm
proposing and which KS is the ideal venue to get.

James