Re: [MAINTAINERS / KERNEL SUMMIT] AI patch review tools

[Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>]

On Wed, Oct 08, 2025 at 04:28:14PM -0300, Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 08, 2025 at 09:08:33PM +0200, Andrew Lunn wrote:
> > > My goal for KS/MS is to discuss how to enable maintainers to use review
> > > automation tools to lower their workload.
>  
> > Maintainers will want to use these tools, if they prove to be useful.
> 
> Right.
> 
> > But ideally, we want the developers to use these tools and fix
> > the issues before they post code for review.
> 
> Sure, as before, people should try to follow the best practices before
> sending pull requests, its in the best interest of everybody.
> 
> But if they do so, and I guess most will, there will be more patches
> flowing upstream, thus Chris effort, I think, right?

I'd argue there will be less patches flowing upstream, lots of v1 (and
sometimes subsequent versions) where maintainers point obvious mistakes
will be avoided. The new v1 that would end up on the list will take more
time to review than the old v1, but that's just because the new v1 will
be the old v2.

To make this happen, though, maintainers will need to be reasonably
confident that obvious mistakes will have already been fixed.

> > That reduces the maintainers workload even more. So Maintainers just
> > need to run the tools to prove that the developers have run the tools
> > and have already fixed the problems.
> 
> I think tools evolve and competing tools may provide different results,
> so the more tools that are used, in all steps, there will be a greater
> chance of catching things _before_ maintainers have to look at
> something.
> 
> As b4 does all sorts of checks, making sure that the patch was vetted by
> whatever automation before it hits their inboxes seems to reduce the
> number of steps maintainers will have to perform.
> 
> - Arnaldo
>  
> > So i'm not sure your goal is the correct long term goal. It should be
> > a tool for everybody, not just maintainers.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart