Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Maintainer burnout

Steven Rostedt
2023-08-17T14:22:06Z

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.

-- Steve