Maintenance of Linux/MIPS?

Maintenance of Linux/MIPS?

[Florian Fainelli]

Hi,

There are a lot of patches at
https://patchwork.linux-mips.org/project/linux-mips/list/ that appear to
be under the "New" state and have not had a chance to be reviewed yet.

What can we do to help speed up the review process, do we need more
reviewers? It seems like most patches affecting Linux/MIPS are still
core MIPS kernel changes, but would it help if say, people were queuing
SoC/board specific patches in trees and submit pull requests? Would that
help lower the amount of patches to review?

Any other suggestion?

Thanks!
-- 
Florian

Re: Maintenance of Linux/MIPS?

[Paul Burton]

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Hello,

On Friday, 25 August 2017 14:21:33 PDT Florian Fainelli wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> There are a lot of patches at
> https://patchwork.linux-mips.org/project/linux-mips/list/ that appear to
> be under the "New" state and have not had a chance to be reviewed yet.
> 
> What can we do to help speed up the review process, do we need more
> reviewers? It seems like most patches affecting Linux/MIPS are still
> core MIPS kernel changes, but would it help if say, people were queuing
> SoC/board specific patches in trees and submit pull requests? Would that
> help lower the amount of patches to review?
> 
> Any other suggestion?
> 
> Thanks!

Personally I think it'd probably be good if Ralf were willing to formally 
share maintainership duties with someone else or a group of people. I think 
James for example would be a great choice, and already dons a maintainer hat.

As-is Ralf ends up being a bottleneck a lot of the time, and the backlog in 
patchwork is pretty good evidence of that. There are a whole lot of patches 
that ought to be going into v4.14, and that ought to be sat in linux-next 
right now in preparation for that. Sadly not many of them are, and usually 
that remains the case until very close to the merge window. Sharing the load 
could only help with this.

Thanks,
    Paul

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Re: Maintenance of Linux/MIPS?

[Paul Burton]

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Hello,

On Friday, 25 August 2017 14:21:33 PDT Florian Fainelli wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> There are a lot of patches at
> https://patchwork.linux-mips.org/project/linux-mips/list/ that appear to
> be under the "New" state and have not had a chance to be reviewed yet.
> 
> What can we do to help speed up the review process, do we need more
> reviewers? It seems like most patches affecting Linux/MIPS are still
> core MIPS kernel changes, but would it help if say, people were queuing
> SoC/board specific patches in trees and submit pull requests? Would that
> help lower the amount of patches to review?
> 
> Any other suggestion?
> 
> Thanks!

Personally I think it'd probably be good if Ralf were willing to formally 
share maintainership duties with someone else or a group of people. I think 
James for example would be a great choice, and already dons a maintainer hat.

As-is Ralf ends up being a bottleneck a lot of the time, and the backlog in 
patchwork is pretty good evidence of that. There are a whole lot of patches 
that ought to be going into v4.14, and that ought to be sat in linux-next 
right now in preparation for that. Sadly not many of them are, and usually 
that remains the case until very close to the merge window. Sharing the load 
could only help with this.

Thanks,
    Paul

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Re: Maintenance of Linux/MIPS?

[David Daney]

On 08/25/2017 04:07 PM, Paul Burton wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Friday, 25 August 2017 14:21:33 PDT Florian Fainelli wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> There are a lot of patches at
>> https://patchwork.linux-mips.org/project/linux-mips/list/ that appear to
>> be under the "New" state and have not had a chance to be reviewed yet.
>>
>> What can we do to help speed up the review process, do we need more
>> reviewers? It seems like most patches affecting Linux/MIPS are still
>> core MIPS kernel changes, but would it help if say, people were queuing
>> SoC/board specific patches in trees and submit pull requests? Would that
>> help lower the amount of patches to review?
>>
>> Any other suggestion?
>>
>> Thanks!
> 
> Personally I think it'd probably be good if Ralf were willing to formally
> share maintainership duties with someone else or a group of people. I think
> James for example would be a great choice, and already dons a maintainer hat.

FWIW, I agree.  James has a lot of experience here and has served as 
maintainer when Ralf was away in the past.  Making him a permanent 
co-maintainer, or similar, with the explicit mandate of getting patches 
upstream to Linus, would be beneficial to all who rely on the MIPS Linux 
kernel.

David.



> 
> As-is Ralf ends up being a bottleneck a lot of the time, and the backlog in
> patchwork is pretty good evidence of that. There are a whole lot of patches
> that ought to be going into v4.14, and that ought to be sat in linux-next
> right now in preparation for that. Sadly not many of them are, and usually
> that remains the case until very close to the merge window. Sharing the load
> could only help with this.
> 
> Thanks,
>      Paul
> 

Re: Maintenance of Linux/MIPS?

[Matt Redfearn]

On 26/08/17 00:14, David Daney wrote:
> On 08/25/2017 04:07 PM, Paul Burton wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> On Friday, 25 August 2017 14:21:33 PDT Florian Fainelli wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> There are a lot of patches at
>>> https://patchwork.linux-mips.org/project/linux-mips/list/ that 
>>> appear to
>>> be under the "New" state and have not had a chance to be reviewed yet.
>>>
>>> What can we do to help speed up the review process, do we need more
>>> reviewers? It seems like most patches affecting Linux/MIPS are still
>>> core MIPS kernel changes, but would it help if say, people were queuing
>>> SoC/board specific patches in trees and submit pull requests? Would 
>>> that
>>> help lower the amount of patches to review?
>>>
>>> Any other suggestion?
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>
>> Personally I think it'd probably be good if Ralf were willing to 
>> formally
>> share maintainership duties with someone else or a group of people. I 
>> think
>> James for example would be a great choice, and already dons a 
>> maintainer hat.
>
> FWIW, I agree.  James has a lot of experience here and has served as 
> maintainer when Ralf was away in the past.  Making him a permanent 
> co-maintainer, or similar, with the explicit mandate of getting 
> patches upstream to Linus, would be beneficial to all who rely on the 
> MIPS Linux kernel.
>
> David.

I'd add my vote to having James as a co-maintainer, which should help 
lower the burden on Ralf and hopefully lead to a faster 
time-to-upstream, as currently quite a few series have required 
respinning simply because the kernel has moved on while they wait and 
the patches have bitrotted.

Matt

>
>
>
>>
>> As-is Ralf ends up being a bottleneck a lot of the time, and the 
>> backlog in
>> patchwork is pretty good evidence of that. There are a whole lot of 
>> patches
>> that ought to be going into v4.14, and that ought to be sat in 
>> linux-next
>> right now in preparation for that. Sadly not many of them are, and 
>> usually
>> that remains the case until very close to the merge window. Sharing 
>> the load
>> could only help with this.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>      Paul
>>
>
>

Re: Maintenance of Linux/MIPS?

[Matt Redfearn]

On 26/08/17 00:14, David Daney wrote:
> On 08/25/2017 04:07 PM, Paul Burton wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> On Friday, 25 August 2017 14:21:33 PDT Florian Fainelli wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> There are a lot of patches at
>>> https://patchwork.linux-mips.org/project/linux-mips/list/ that 
>>> appear to
>>> be under the "New" state and have not had a chance to be reviewed yet.
>>>
>>> What can we do to help speed up the review process, do we need more
>>> reviewers? It seems like most patches affecting Linux/MIPS are still
>>> core MIPS kernel changes, but would it help if say, people were queuing
>>> SoC/board specific patches in trees and submit pull requests? Would 
>>> that
>>> help lower the amount of patches to review?
>>>
>>> Any other suggestion?
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>
>> Personally I think it'd probably be good if Ralf were willing to 
>> formally
>> share maintainership duties with someone else or a group of people. I 
>> think
>> James for example would be a great choice, and already dons a 
>> maintainer hat.
>
> FWIW, I agree.  James has a lot of experience here and has served as 
> maintainer when Ralf was away in the past.  Making him a permanent 
> co-maintainer, or similar, with the explicit mandate of getting 
> patches upstream to Linus, would be beneficial to all who rely on the 
> MIPS Linux kernel.
>
> David.

I'd add my vote to having James as a co-maintainer, which should help 
lower the burden on Ralf and hopefully lead to a faster 
time-to-upstream, as currently quite a few series have required 
respinning simply because the kernel has moved on while they wait and 
the patches have bitrotted.

Matt

>
>
>
>>
>> As-is Ralf ends up being a bottleneck a lot of the time, and the 
>> backlog in
>> patchwork is pretty good evidence of that. There are a whole lot of 
>> patches
>> that ought to be going into v4.14, and that ought to be sat in 
>> linux-next
>> right now in preparation for that. Sadly not many of them are, and 
>> usually
>> that remains the case until very close to the merge window. Sharing 
>> the load
>> could only help with this.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>      Paul
>>
>
>

[PATCH] MAINTAINERS: Add James as MIPS co-maintainer

[Florian Fainelli]

Based on popular vote, designate James as a co-maintainer for the MIPS
architecture.

Signed-off-by: Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@gmail.com>
---
 MAINTAINERS | 1 +
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

diff --git a/MAINTAINERS b/MAINTAINERS
index 317e72c230ca..68204d6bef2b 100644
--- a/MAINTAINERS
+++ b/MAINTAINERS
@@ -8768,6 +8768,7 @@ S:	Maintained
 F:	drivers/usb/image/microtek.*
 
 MIPS
+M:	James Hogan <james.hogan@imgtec.com>
 M:	Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>
 L:	linux-mips@linux-mips.org
 W:	http://www.linux-mips.org/
-- 
2.11.0