From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752967AbYE1Ro0 (ORCPT ); Wed, 28 May 2008 13:44:26 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751919AbYE1RoS (ORCPT ); Wed, 28 May 2008 13:44:18 -0400 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([198.137.202.10]:55850 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751696AbYE1RoS (ORCPT ); Wed, 28 May 2008 13:44:18 -0400 Message-ID: <483D99CA.8050802@zytor.com> Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 10:43:38 -0700 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (X11/20080501) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: James Bottomley CC: ksummit-2008-discuss@lists.linux-foundation.org, linux-kernel Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2008-discuss] Fixing the Kernel Janitors project References: <1211995212.3445.52.camel@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <1211995212.3445.52.camel@localhost.localdomain> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org James Bottomley wrote: > > but there are many more. The greatest problem, as I see it is that by > pouring vitriol like this on newbies, we're really damaging our > reputation as a community that welcomes newcomers and strangling our > necessary supply of willing volunteers. On the other hand, as a > maintainer, when there's people yelling me at about patches not being > included plus a persistent regressions list and about ten bug reports to > track down, the last thing I want to see within a million miles of my > inbox is a white space fixing patch. The more of these patches we get, > the worse the problem becomes and the shorter and more inflammatory the > responses get. We can't go on like this. > As far as whitespace fixes, it seems we should just declare a flag day, specifically, right before Linus releases 2.6.26 or .27 he'd run "cleanfile" on the WHOLE TREE and check it in (either as one patch or several.) After that, one would either have to use "patch -l" to refresh patches across the flag day, or I would write a reverse version of "cleanpatch" (one which cleans the minus lines and the context instead of the output) to fix them up. Then the whole tree would be whitespace-clean, it would concentrate the pain to a single event, and then we can go on with life. -hpa