[U-Boot] [PATCH v2] Merge and reformat boards.cfg and MAINTAINERS

Masahiro Yamada
2013-09-27T11:05:35Z

Hello Albert

> I set the board state in the new board.cfg to "Orphan" if and only
> if the board was listed in such an "unknown / orphan" section, and to
> "Active in any other case". This implies that:
>
> - some boards were present in the old boards.cfg but not listed in
> MAINTAINERS (e.g. sh7785lcr), which means there are "Active" boards
> which do not have a maintainer;
>
> - some "unknown / orphan" boards had a "last known maintainer address"
> specified (e.g. EVB64260_750CX), which means there are "Orphan" boards
> which have a maintainer listed.

To sum up things, boards have actually 3 states:

(1) Active:
had a maintainer in the original MAINTAINERS file

(2) Orphan:
listed under unknown/orphan in the original MAINTAINERS file

(3) maybe Active, maybe Orphan:
not mentioned in the original MAINTAINERS file

You pushed both (1) and (3) into Active state in the new boards.cfg
although many boards in (3) might not have a maintainer.

In such a case, what is the meaning to categorize into Active or Orphan?

> IOW, a board's state (Active or Orphan) has no formal relationship with
> this board having maintainers or not; the state only determines whether
> this board should be built (Active) or not (Orphan).

I think unknown/orphan stands for "no maintainers" in the original MAINTAINERS file.
Now you recongnize this as "Should not be built".
Is this the same meaning?

In my opinion, 'Orphan' might be a misleading term for the latter.
Active / Dead ?

How abount reconsidering a bit more about this categorization?

Best Regards
Masahiro Yamada