Re: [PATCH v4 2/3] docs: define policy limiting the inclusion of generated files

[Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>]

On Thu, 5 Jun 2025 at 11:52, Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com> wrote:
> +At times contributors may use or create scripts/tools to generate an initial
> +boilerplate code template which is then filled in to produce the final patch.
> +The output of such a tool would still be considered the "preferred format",
> +since it is intended to be a foundation for further human authored changes.
> +Such tools are acceptable to use, provided they follow a deterministic process
> +and there is clearly defined copyright and licensing for their output.

For the case where there's a one-off generation step and then the
intent is purely human-authored changes from there onwards, why
do we care whether the tool followed a deterministic process or
not? As long as the copyright/licensing situation is clear and
the submitter has checked tha the generation is what they want,
what does determinism get us?

As a trivial example, this rules out a hacky one-off python
script that produces output by iterating through a hashtable
if you forgot to add a "sort" to that ordering to make it
deterministic.

-- PMM