From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:54830) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1S7AXl-0000TH-TR for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:04:31 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1S7AXg-00032D-3j for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:04:29 -0400 Received: from mail-gy0-f173.google.com ([209.85.160.173]:43688) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1S7AXf-000315-VQ for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:04:24 -0400 Received: by ghrr14 with SMTP id r14so3421658ghr.4 for ; Mon, 12 Mar 2012 12:04:22 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <4F5E48B2.5020708@codemonkey.ws> Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:04:18 -0500 From: Anthony Liguori MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <4F5E2F77.1060008@codemonkey.ws> <4F5E44E9.7040401@codemonkey.ws> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] We need more reviewers/maintainers!! List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Stefano Stabellini Cc: "qemu-devel@nongnu.org" On 03/12/2012 02:10 PM, Stefano Stabellini wrote: > On Mon, 12 Mar 2012, Anthony Liguori wrote: >> On 03/12/2012 12:34 PM, Stefano Stabellini wrote: >>> On Mon, 12 Mar 2012, Anthony Liguori wrote: >>>> On 03/12/2012 12:06 PM, Stefano Stabellini wrote: >>>>> Hi all, >>>>> I don't mean to steer any controversy or start any flame wars here, but >>>>> rather I want to point out a problem in the QEMU Community that is >>>>> preventing us and other people from having a good experience working >>>>> upstream with QEMU. Call it constructive criticism. >>>>> >>>>> Patches are being posted to the list that don't get any reviews at all. >>>>> Other patches get reviewed the first time, then once they are reposted >>>>> they don't get any other reviews or acked-by or reviewed-by. >>>> >>>> In all fairness, QEMU continues to grow year-to-year both in terms of total >>>> commits and number of contributors. >>>> >>>> The area that we struggle with is infrequent contributors that contribute >>>> non-trivial things and are write-only contributors. >>>> >>>> In this case, I really think the problem is expecting to be a write-only >>>> contributor. Part of participating in a community is not only pushing your own >>>> patches for acceptance but also reviewing other people's patches and >>>> participating in the discussion. If everyone only sends patches and doesn't >>>> review patches, then we'll never make progress. >>>> >>>> So I'd strongly suggest trying to spend some time reviewing other people's work. >>>> Right now, there are at least four different efforts around migration yet I >>>> don't see any of the people reviewing the other efforts. I think this is really >>>> the main problem. >>> >>> Point taken. >>> However maintainers should also be responsible of reviewing patches of >>> "infrequent write-only contributors". >>> >>> I certainly do it for the areas I am a maintainer of, and in general we >>> try to do it on xen-devel. Overall I think we are mostly succeeding even >>> though admittedly the traffic is lower than qemu-devel. >>> Maybe we just need more maintainers? >> >> Yes, we do. But as Paul Brook likes to say, in order to be a maintainer, you >> have to be willing to say no, not just apply patches. >> >> It's not a question of maintainers, it's a question of people providing critical >> review of patches. > > Right, but if one's name is right below a particular subsystem in the > MAINTAINERS file, one should be the one in charge of providing a timely > review to all the patches that touch that subsystem. Note that MAINTAINERS lacks an entry for savevm.c. That should imply M: Orphan. > > If you one is a maintainer and one is silently ignoring a patch touching > one's subsystem, then one is not doing a good job as a maintainer. > Of course if one is a maintainer and rather than giving useful feedback, > limits the reply to a statement like "No", is also not doing a very good > job. > Do we all agree on these basic principles? It's more complicated than that in a large project. MAINTAINERS has different support levels. I think what you're proposing is M: Supported. M: Odd fixes (which is what I proposed savevm.c as) is less rigorous than that. Regards, Anthony Liguori Regards, Anthony Liguori > > If it is not the case, and you don't think this is the role of a QEMU > maintainer, then maybe we need to invent a new name for a new role that > covers that function.