Re: tracking MAINTAINERS versus tracking SUBSYSTEMS

[Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>]

On Sun, 2007-08-19 at 08:22 -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Aug 2007, Joe Perches wrote:
> > On Sat, 2007-08-18 at 13:35 -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > >   $ show_subsystem drivers/bluetooth/bpa10x.c
> > >   BLUETOOTH
> > "what's a subsystem"? I'm not sure there is an appropriate
> > definition. If there is an appropriate definition, why should anyone
> > care what subsystem a particular file is in?
> i'm confused -- i thought that was sort of the whole purpose of this
> exercise, to match parts of the kernel source tree against the
> maintainer for those parts, and to do that via the defined
> "subsystem" which is currently used in MAINTAINERS.

What I did was for patch submission.

That script should probably be named "get_patch_cc_list".
It does now by default use git to find and include the
most frequent signatories.

I think that descriptions of subsystems are not
particularly useful.  The file hierarchy should
effectively do that.  I think a tool to inform a
"list of interested parties" when a file is touched
is useful though.

If there is to be a subsystem definition, I think it
needs to be hierarchical with things like specific
net drivers not a subsystem, but an element of the
subsystem net:drivers (or drivers:net or both).

If these elements are bundled together into a single
"subsystem" descriptor file you will run into the "hot"
file problem that Linus described.

cheers,  Joe