Re: [Qemu-trivial] [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 18/47] MAINTAINERS: add missing TCG entry

[Cornelia Huck <cohuck@redhat.com>]

On Thu, 10 Aug 2017 10:22:54 +0100
Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org> wrote:

> On 10 August 2017 at 09:46, Cornelia Huck <cohuck@redhat.com> wrote:
> > The root problem is "some files have no maintainers". The reasons range
> > from "forgot to include the file in the pattern" (easily fixed), over
> > "file is updated via a script" (the linux-headers case), to "nobody
> > feels up to the task" (which is the worst case).
> >
> > In most cases, I don't think the recent contributors list is very
> > helpful. Somebody who simply did a tree-wide rename is unlikely to be
> > able to make a good judgment about a complicated logic change. Just
> > printing qemu-devel as the address to send this to is probably better;
> > unfortunately, it may cause patches to languish on the list if nobody
> > takes pity on them.
> >
> > Do we need someone collecting non-trivial patches like that, who either
> > pesters others or picks up the patches themselves?  
> 
> The problem is that if nobody's feeling up to the task of taking
> on a particular single file which has no maintainer, then it's
> definitely true that nobody's going to feel up to taking on
> the entire collection of unmaintained files...
> 
> I think the UI (giving no consideration to how we might implement
> this!) would ideally be something like:
>  * if anybody mails a patch which touches an "unmaintained" file,
>    a robot should send a reply along the lines of "thanks for the
>    patch; unfortunately file X is not maintained so it may be
>    tricky to get patch review for this. You'll need to be
>    persistent and do more of the legwork than if you were patching
>    a file that did have an active maintainer" so contributors
>    know when they've wandered into the swamp

That's a good idea.

>  * some mechanism for easily finding patches to unmaintained
>    files which haven't got review yet, so that anybody with some
>    spare time and interest can move some of them along (the idea
>    being to spread the load rather than trying to designate a
>    particular "owner" for this headache)

Can maybe patchew set a special flag for patches that only touch
unmaintained files?

>  * ditto for finding patches to unmaintained files which have got
>    review but which haven't been committed
> 
> thanks
> -- PMM