Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Maintainer burnout

Jani Nikula
2023-08-17T15:33:17Z

On Thu, 17 Aug 2023, Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Aug 2023 15:00:57 +0300
> Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@intel.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 16 Aug 2023, Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org> wrote:
>> > In so far as making it possible to get b) to help, my current excitement
>> > surrounds around what Song Liu mentioned to me at LSFMM and then
>> > quickly demonstrated that the eBPF folks are doing with patchwork.
>> > Get the patches to be tested automatically, and *immediately*
>> > patch reviewers and maintainers can get feedback if something is not even
>> > worth reviewing.
>>
>> I'm all for automated testing and CI, and all i915 patches get tested
>> before merging. But requiring everything to pass before a human so much
>> as looks at it can be incredibly demotivating for contributors. For
>> example, if they polish the contribution, and take all corner cases into
>> consideration to pass the tests... and then get told their design is all
>> wrong and needs to be redone from scratch. It's a balance.
>>
>
> For big new features, I agree. They shouldn't need to pass all tests. I
> think anything that has an [RFC] subject should bypass the test
> requirements. But I get a bunch of fixes patches, that fail tests all the
> time. If you are sending a fix to something that causes a regression, the
> maintainer should not be involved. Automated tests should be enough to tell
> the submitter to go back and redo their patch.

Agreed.

BR,
Jani.

--
Jani Nikula, Intel Open Source Graphics Center