[Ksummit-discuss] [PATCH v2 0/3] Maintainer Entry Profiles

Dan Williams
2019-09-11T16:03:04Z

Changes since v1 [1]:
- Simplify the profile to a hopefully non-controversial set of
attributes that address the most common sources of contributor
confusion, or maintainer frustration.
- Rename "Subsystem Profile" to "Maintainer Entry Profile". Not every
entry in MAINTAINERS represents a full subsystem. There may be driver
local considerations to communicate to a submitter in addition to wider
subsystem guidelines.
- Delete the old P: tag in MAINTAINERS rather than convert to a new E:
tag (Joe Perches).
[1]: http://lore.kernel.org/r/154225759358.2499188.15268218778137905050.stgit@dwillia2-desk3.amr.corp.intel.com

---

At last years Plumbers Conference I proposed the Maintainer Entry
Profile as a document that a maintainer can provide to set contributor
expectations and provide fodder for a discussion between maintainers
about the merits of different maintainer policies.

For those that did not attend, the goal of the Maintainer Entry Profile,
and the Maintainer Handbook more generally, is to provide a desk
reference for maintainers both new and experienced. The session
introduction was:

The first rule of kernel maintenance is that there are no hard and
fast rules. That state of affairs is both a blessing and a curse. It
has served the community well to be adaptable to the different
people and different problem spaces that inhabit the kernel
community. However, that variability also leads to inconsistent
experiences for contributors, little to no guidance for new
contributors, and unnecessary stress on current maintainers. There
are quite a few of people who have been around long enough to make
enough mistakes that they have gained some hard earned proficiency.
However if the kernel community expects to keep growing it needs to
be able both scale the maintainers it has and ramp new ones without
necessarily let them make a decades worth of mistakes to learn the
ropes.

To be clear, the proposed document does not impose or suggest new
rules. Instead it provides an outlet to document the unwritten rules
and policies in effect for each subsystem, and that each subsystem
might decide differently for whatever reason.

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Dan Williams (3):
MAINTAINERS: Reclaim the P: tag for Maintainer Entry Profile
Maintainer Handbook: Maintainer Entry Profile
libnvdimm, MAINTAINERS: Maintainer Entry Profile

Documentation/maintainer/index.rst | 1
.../maintainer/maintainer-entry-profile.rst | 99 ++++++++++++++++++++
Documentation/nvdimm/maintainer-entry-profile.rst | 64 +++++++++++++
MAINTAINERS | 20 ++--
4 files changed, 175 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 Documentation/maintainer/maintainer-entry-profile.rst
create mode 100644 Documentation/nvdimm/maintainer-entry-profile.rst