Re: [PATCH] docs: media: document media multi-committers rules and process

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

Hi Mauro,

On Fri, Nov 29, 2024 at 11:29:52AM +0100, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> Em Thu, 28 Nov 2024 21:07:07 +0200 Laurent Pinchart escreveu:
> 
> > > With that in mind, every committer has duties of reviewing other
> > > developer's patches submitted for the drivers that they're listed as
> > > a maintainer at the MAINTAINERS file entries.  
> > 
> > I'm sorry but that's not a multi-committer model, it's a co-maintenance
> > model. If that's what you really want we can reopen the discussion and
> > start anew, but I don't think it's a good idea.
> > 
> > As I said before, if it increases my work load, I don't want commit
> > rights. I'll keep sending pull requests, you'll have to keep processing
> > them, and patches will be merged slower. It will be a lose-lose
> > situation for everybody, you, me, contributors and users.
> > 
> > Starting with a situation where we are understaffed and trying to solve
> > it by putting more work on the few people who currently keep the
> > subsystem alive doesn't sound like a winning strategy. 
> 
> After sleeping over it, I agree that you're partially right on this.

\o/

You should sleep more often :-D

> Doing timely reviews is orthogonal of being a committer. What defines
> if you need to do timely reviews is if you're listed or not at the
> MAINTANERS file as "M:" - e.g. if the developer is a maintainer
> (on its broader sense) or not. This applies for both PR and MR workflows.
> 
> Still, if one is not fulfilling its duty as maintainer, he may end
> losing maintainership status and the corresponding committer rights.
> 
> I wrote a separate patch to make it clear. See below.
> 
> Thanks,
> Mauro
> 
> ---
> 
> [PATCH] docs: media: profile: make it clearer about maintainership duties
> 
> During the review of the media committes profile, it was noticed
> that the responsibility for timely review patches was not clear:
> such review is expected that all developers listed at MAINTAINERS
> with the "M:" tag (e.g. "maintainers" on its broad sense).
> 
> This is orthogonal of being a media committer or not. Such duty
> is implied at:
> 
> 	Documentation/admin-guide/reporting-issues.rst
> 
> and at the MAINTAINERS header, when it says that even when the
> status is "odd fixes", the patches will flow in.
> 
> So, let make it explicit at the maintainer-entry-profile that
> maintainers need to do timely reviews.
> 
> Also, while right now our focus is on granting committer rights to
> maintainers, the media-committer model may evolve in the future to
> accept other committers that don't have such duties.
> 
> So, make it clear at the media-committer.rst that the duties
> related to reviewing patches from others are for the drivers
> they are maintainers as well.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org>

I'll comment on this on v3 of the series.

> diff --git a/Documentation/driver-api/media/maintainer-entry-profile.rst b/Documentation/driver-api/media/maintainer-entry-profile.rst
> index 650803c30c41..6daf71bc72c1 100644
> --- a/Documentation/driver-api/media/maintainer-entry-profile.rst
> +++ b/Documentation/driver-api/media/maintainer-entry-profile.rst
> @@ -147,6 +147,11 @@ b. Committers' workflow: patches are handled by media committers::
>  On both workflows, all patches shall be properly reviewed at
>  linux-media@vger.kernel.org before being merged at media-committers.git.
>  
> +Such patches will be timely-reviewed by developers listed as maintainers at
> +the MAINTAINERS file. Such maintainers will follow one of the above
> +workflows, e. g. they will either send a pull request or merge patches
> +directly at the media-committers tree.
> +
>  When patches are picked by patchwork and when merged at media-committers,
>  CI bots will check for errors and may provide e-mail feedback about
>  patch problems. When this happens, the patch submitter must fix them
> diff --git a/Documentation/driver-api/media/media-committer.rst b/Documentation/driver-api/media/media-committer.rst
> index 1756a7af6353..a873ef84fbca 100644
> --- a/Documentation/driver-api/media/media-committer.rst
> +++ b/Documentation/driver-api/media/media-committer.rst
> @@ -87,9 +87,9 @@ be delegating part of their maintenance tasks.
>  Due to that, to become a committer or a core committer, a consensus between
>  all subsystem maintainers is required, as they all need to trust a developer
>  well enough to be delegated the responsibility to maintain part of the code
> -and to properly review patches from third parties, in a timely manner and
> -keeping the status of the reviewed code at https://patchwork.linuxtv.org
> -updated.
> +and to properly review patches from third parties for the drivers they are
> +maintainers in a timely manner and keeping the status of the reviewed code
> +at https://patchwork.linuxtv.org updated.
>  
>  .. Note::
>  

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart