Re: RFC: switching "THE REST" in MAINTAINERS away from linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org

Greg KH
2023-11-07T10:42:19Z

On Tue, Nov 07, 2023 at 12:15:13PM +0200, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 07, 2023 at 10:18:58AM +0100, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> > On 11/6/23 23:52, Pavel Machek wrote:
> > >> For this reason, I propose switching the "F: *" entry in MAINTAINERS
> > >> ("THE REST") topatches@lists.linux.dev instead. This list differs from LKML
> > >> in the following important aspects:
> > >
> > > How many patches are in "the rest" area? I don't think it is that
> > > many, and I believe those should be broadcasted, as it is not clear
> > > who should handle them. And lkml seems to be reasonable place for them
> > > at the moment.
> >
> > Indeed, I suspect that a lot of the traffic to LKML does not come from
> > "THE REST", but rather from people using a git-send-email configuration like
> >
> > [sendemail]
> > to = linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
>
> Do we document this as being a recommended git-send-email configuration
> ? That sounds horrible :-( Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
> states
>
> linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org should be used by default for all
> patches, but the volume on that list has caused a number of developers
> to tune it out. Please do not spam unrelated lists and unrelated
> people, though.
>
> This should be updated, even if for the only reason that the text is
> quite confusing (in my opinion at least, I'm not sure if it means LKML
> should be used for all patches, or shouldn't).
>
> To give another data point, balancing a bit the replies that expressed
> surprise at Konstantin's point that LKML is generally seen as useless
> for holding actual discussions, I do not follow LKML at all due to the
> amount of mails that are not general discussions. It drowns the useful
> information in noise for me.

I think changing the default so that our tools don't automatically point
to lkml will be the key. For example, here's what get_maintainer.pl
says to do:

$ ./scripts/get_maintainer.pl drivers/usb/Kconfig
Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> (supporter:USB SUBSYSTEM)
linux-usb@vger.kernel.org (open list:USB SUBSYSTEM)
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org (open list)

Why, when we have a valid mailing list (linux-usb), should lkml also be
involved? I think this patch changes this, which is a good thing and
should cut down on the overall size over time.

thanks,

greg k-h