Re: [RFC] MAINTAINERS service, was: Re: alphabetic ordering of MAINTAINERS

[Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>]

On Fri 2008-07-04 14:34:13, Krzysztof Halasa wrote:
> Oliver Neukum <oliver@neukum.org> writes:
> 
> >> I wanted to add an entry to MAINTAINERS and while doing it I saw that in
> >> the corresponding region the alphabetic ordering is broken.  Then I
> >> inteded to fix that up for a trivial patch.  Next was to check the rest
> >> of the file and there are so much misorderings that it's not sensible to
> >> choose the trivial path anymore as there are currently 114 entries out
> >> of order[1].
> >
> > What good does alphabetic ordering? You'll grep it anyway.
> 
> I was thinking about a mailing list / database service instead:
> - source file/directory-based (e.g. someone could maintain whole
>   drivers/, someone else drivers/char and others drivers/char/asdfg.[ch])
> - people would be able to add themselves as "observers" using mail
>   and/or HTML interface
> - sending a patch would automatically trigger Cc: to all people
>   registered as maintainers (or "observers") for the files modified
> - full recipient list would be present in mail sent by the service, so
>   the following discussion wouldn't need it anymore. It would be used
>   only for posting patches.
> - as such, I don't expect a need for spam filtering - messages
>   containing no patch would be rejected in the SMTP session.
> 
> Pro: no more missing Cc:, no more manual lookups and guessing, you
>      just Cc: the service, possibility for "observers".
> Con: another thing to create and maintain, you don't immediately know
>      who exactly has been sent a copy.
> 
> I think I could create a test service but after the test phase it
> should probably go to some machine more reliable/able than mine.

If something like that existed/was useful, I guess finding hosting
would not be huge problem.

And yes, I like the idea.

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