RFHelp: Splitting MAINTAINERS into maintainers/* and Makefile/Kconfig support

RFHelp: Splitting MAINTAINERS into maintainers/* and Makefile/Kconfig support

[Joe Perches]

I've got a tree with a directory full of separate
MAINTAINER blocks that looks like:

00_file_description
3c359_network_driver
3c505_network_driver
3c59x_network_driver
3cr990_network_driver
...
zd1211rw_wireless_driver
zf_machz_watchdog
zr36067_video_for_linux_driver
zs_decstation_z85c30_serial_driver
zz_the_rest

A little more than 600 files

So that distributions could continue to produce
a MAINTAINERS block if desired, how could
make be extended to produce such a file from
these individual blocks?

Maybe:
        "cat [0-9a-z]* > ../MAINTAINERS"?

Would it need to?

Anyone have suggestions for Makefile/Kconfig support?

Re: RFHelp: Splitting MAINTAINERS into maintainers/* and Makefile/Kconfig support

[Chris Snook]

Joe Perches wrote:
> I've got a tree with a directory full of separate
> MAINTAINER blocks that looks like:
> 
> 00_file_description
> 3c359_network_driver
> 3c505_network_driver
> 3c59x_network_driver
> 3cr990_network_driver
> ...
> zd1211rw_wireless_driver
> zf_machz_watchdog
> zr36067_video_for_linux_driver
> zs_decstation_z85c30_serial_driver
> zz_the_rest
> 
> A little more than 600 files

NO.  PLEASE!

The whole point of MAINTAINERS is to have one central repository for this 
information, instead of scattering it throughout the various source files.  If 
that file is getting too unwieldy (and I don't think it is) then I could 
understand splitting it up hierarchically, for example having a 
drivers/net/MAINTAINERS that listed the info for all the net drivers.

What you're suggesting is a less efficient equivalent to putting the info 
directly into the source files.  If that approach was enough to make people 
happy, we wouldn't have MAINTAINERS to begin with.  Perhaps with a little 
automation it could be revived, though I think that adding a path pattern 
removes the need, while keeping it easier to parse by scripts.

I appreciate the effort to make MAINTAINERS more useful, but please don't add 
another 600 files to the tree.

	-- Chris

Re: RFHelp: Splitting MAINTAINERS into maintainers/* and Makefile/Kconfig support

[Joe Perches]

On Fri, 2007-08-17 at 02:25 -0400, Chris Snook wrote:
> The whole point of MAINTAINERS is to have one central repository for this 
> information, instead of scattering it throughout the various source files.  If 
> that file is getting too unwieldy (and I don't think it is) then I could 
> understand splitting it up hierarchically, for example having a 
> drivers/net/MAINTAINERS that listed the info for all the net drivers.

The individual MAINTAINERS files eliminates what Linus
described as their "hotness".
No shared updates by multiple parties.

> What you're suggesting is a less efficient equivalent to putting the info 
> directly into the source files.

I believe that wrong.

Maintainer patterns frequently look like:

F:	arch/i386/kernel/cpu/cpufreq/
F:	drivers/cpufreq/
F:	include/linux/cpufreq.h

If in source, this would currently require 21 + 12 + 1 
modifications instead of 1.

> If that approach was enough to make people 
> happy, we wouldn't have MAINTAINERS to begin with.

I think the insertion of maintainers into source
itself is wrong.  It's freeform, error prone and
requires significant modifications to source files
as maintainers come and go.
 
> Perhaps with a little automation it could be revived,

Which is the help I'm looking for.

Can someone please help here on ideas or implementation
adding a makefile target for MAINTAINERS from files
in a specific subdirectory?

> though I think that adding a path pattern 
> removes the need, while keeping it easier to parse by scripts.
> I appreciate the effort to make MAINTAINERS more useful,
> but please don't add  another 600 files to the tree.

In the distributed form, you'll still end up with
~400 new files spread all over the tree.

Either way, you'll have hundreds of files.

$ grep "^F:" MAINTAINERS |  sed -e "s/[A-Za-z0-9\_\*\.\-]*$//" | sort |
uniq | wc -l
415

Centralized as maintainers/* or distributed as ../../../Maintainers

Pick one, I don't much care, but I'm still looking for
Makefile/KConfig help reassembling it into a single
MAINTAINERS block similar to the current form.

Help?

cheers, Joe

Re: RFHelp: Splitting MAINTAINERS into maintainers/* and Makefile/Kconfig support

[Sam Ravnborg]

Hi Joe.

> > Perhaps with a little automation it could be revived,
> 
> Which is the help I'm looking for.
> 
> Can someone please help here on ideas or implementation
> adding a makefile target for MAINTAINERS from files
> in a specific subdirectory?

Adding a specific target på top-level Makefile is easy to
do so I assume you are looking for something more advanced?

And that part "more advanced" I do not know what is.
It is easy to traverse the tree and build up a file
and I think the easies is to do so in perl or similar.

Doing so using the normal kbuild machinery is not soo
good since it will be parallel and we want something serail
here.

If you define how the Maintainer info is stored we can work
out something.

	Sam

Re: RFHelp: Splitting MAINTAINERS into maintainers/* and Makefile/Kconfig support

[Joe Perches]

On Fri, 2007-08-17 at 16:48 +0200, Sam Ravnborg wrote:
> Adding a specific target på top-level Makefile is easy to
> do so I assume you are looking for something more advanced?

No, I'm looking for something simple.
Perhaps something like:

Makefile contents:

all: [0-9a-z]*

install:
	sh cat [0-9a-z]* > ../MAINTAINERS

clean:
	rm -f ../MAINTAINERS

I don't hardly understand the linux make machinery
for files that aren't .o, so I don't know if that's
reasonable or valid.

> And that part "more advanced" I do not know what is.
> Doing so using the normal kbuild machinery is not soo
> good since it will be parallel and we want something serail
> here.
> 
> If you define how the Maintainer info is stored we can work
> out something.

My preference is for a single directory with 
maintainers stored as separate files because
it's very simple, but it's still up in the air.

Basically breaking up the current monolithic
MAINTAINERS file into separate little files.

For instance this chunk of MAINTAINERS
[...]
3C359 NETWORK DRIVER
P:	Mike Phillips
M:	mikep@linuxtr.net
L:	netdev@vger.kernel.org
W:	http://www.linuxtr.net
S:	Maintained
F:	drivers/net/tokenring/3c359*

3C505 NETWORK DRIVER
P:	Philip Blundell
M:	philb@gnu.org
L:	netdev@vger.kernel.org
S:	Maintained
F:	drivers/net/3c505*
[...]

would become

File "maintainers/3c359_network_driver" with content:
3C359 NETWORK DRIVER
P:	Mike Phillips
M:	mikep@linuxtr.net
L:	netdev@vger.kernel.org
W:	http://www.linuxtr.net
S:	Maintained
F:	drivers/net/tokenring/3c359*

and

File "maintainers/3c505_network_driver" with content:
3C505 NETWORK DRIVER
P:	Philip Blundell
M:	philb@gnu.org
L:	netdev@vger.kernel.org
S:	Maintained
F:	drivers/net/3c505*

thanks,  Joe