Re: tracking MAINTAINERS versus tracking SUBSYSTEMS

[Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>]

On Mon, 2007-08-20 at 15:31 -0400, Chris Snook wrote:
> Until I can pass a patch or source file as an argument to a script and get out 
> the URL of the git tree it needs to go into on the path to Linus's tree, 
> MAINTAINERS is inadequate. If I ask for the MAINTAINER info of 
> drivers/net/atl1/atl1_main.c, I should get back myself, my co-maintainer, our 
> sourceforge URL, our mailing list address, etc. There should also be a 
> mechanism, either as part of MAINTAINERS or something else, that will tell me 
> that atl1 is part of the netdev subsystem, which is discussed on 
> netdev@vger.kernel.org, maintained by Jeff Garzik, and has the appropriate URI 
> for the netdev GIT tree.

Finding a specific "List" or "Web" or "Tree" from a file is
a pretty easy extension to the current get_maintainer script.

The git_maintainer script could easily be modified to take
a filename rather than a patch file as input too.

There is no specific "parent" information in MAINTAINERS.
Are you suggesting there should be?

Still, it's easy to use directory parentage.
Is that good enough?

For instance:

ATL1 has this maintainer block:

        ATL1 ETHERNET DRIVER
        P: Jay Cliburn
        M: jcliburn@gmail.com
        P: Chris Snook
        M: csnook@redhat.com
        L: atl1-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
        W: http://sourceforge.net/projects/atl1
        W: http://atl1.sourceforge.net
        S: Maintained
        F: drivers/net/atl1/
        
and NETWORK DEVICE DRIVERS has:

        NETWORK DEVICE DRIVERS
        P: Andrew Morton
        M: akpm@linux-foundation.org
        P: Jeff Garzik
        M: jgarzik@pobox.com
        L: netdev@vger.kernel.org
        T: git kernel.org:/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jgarzik/netdev-2.6.git
        S: Maintained
        F: drivers/net/
        
So, NETWORK DEVICE DRIVERS would be CC'd on any change
to ATL1 (or any other driver in drivers/net/...)

Of course the same lookup could apply to L: or T:

cheers,  Joe