[U-Boot-Users] Changes to U-Boot Development Process

Aubrey Li
2007-01-26T08:31:06Z

On 1/18/07, Wolfgang Denk <wd@denx.de> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> many of you know all too well that we have problems with the
> development process of U-Boot. The biggest problem is that it takes
> much too long until new contributed code finds it's way into the
> public source code repository.
>
> Switching from CVS to git helped a lot on the technical side. It was
> especially important as it also opened the door for organizational
> changes, which are urgently needed.
>
> We've been discussion these issues for some time, and here is our
> joint proposal. "We", that is mostly Detlev Zundel, Stefan Roese, and
> me (Wolfgang Denk). Of course we also had input form many other
> sources.
>
>
> As this mail will propose quite a fundamental change for the U-Boot
> project, please allow us to introduce it with a few short reflections
> on the current state of affairs.
>
> Being a regular reader of this list you will be well aware that even
> with all the problems in the development process and some ugly areas
> in the U-Boot code (like the #ifdef mazes) there is one important
> feature: that's the quality of the U-Boot code base - being
> highlighted quite well by the literal absence of temporary breakages
> in the development code base. This alone allows for the well known
> "use the latest code from the repository" answer when someone enters
> the grounds of this project for the first time. It is well worth to
> reflect on this quality for a little while.
>
> Having done that we may well ask where this quality comes from? We
> think that anybody reading this list only for a limited time will be
> able to come up with the answer, namely the continuous maintenance
> effort of Wolfgang and his modus operandi of personally reviewing
> nearly each and every contribution in this multi-architecture project
> supporting hundreds of boards. It should be obvious how important
> such a level of code review is to keep U-Boot from falling into
> disconnected pieces - just think of the effort to keep aspects of
> U-Boot similar across all supported architectures.
>
> But of course even Wolfgang only has 24 hours per day, and the
> positive effect of this maintenance mode has shrunk continuously in
> comparison to the downside of the embarassingly long backlog of
> patches posted on this mailing list waiting to be processed,
> rendering new lines of development very difficult to say the least.
>
> So the time is more than ripe to change this while explicitely trying
> to keep the quality of the project on the high grounds that we
> brazenly claim for it :)
>
> Gladly there are other projects in the F/OSS community that are worth
> taking a peek at to snatch a hint or two on how we can tackle this
> task.
>
> Considering all this we propose a change in maintaining the U-Boot
> code base to a model similar to what is currently being done with the
> Linux kernel, namely we would like to establish a community of
> "custodian" maintainers, responsible for certain sub-systems,
> aspects, architectures, or board families of the U-Boot source tree.
>
> We would like to follow the Linux precedent by assembling a list of
> people willing to invest time and effort into this; the already
> existing MAINTAINERS file will serve a new function to list the
> individual custodians with their corresponding area of responsibilty
> and contact information.
>
> Each custodian will have to administrate his or her git tree to
> streamline transparent development and integration (pulling) into the
> "official" U-Boot repository. If the need should arise (for example,
> if a custodian doesn't have convenient means to host it himself),
> DENX will of course be glad to host such trees.

So does custodian have permission to push his commit into the official
repository or the present maintainers are still responsible for
pulling all of the subpart trees regularly and integrate into upstream
repository?

-Aubrey