[U-Boot] u-boot-socfpga repository

Dinh Nguyen
2014-09-14T16:02:08Z

Hi Wolfgang,

On 9/12/14, 5:51 PM, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> Dear Dinh,
>
> In message <541373AD.4020902@opensource.altera.com> you wrote:
>>
>> Then I vote for myself as the custodian for u-boot-socfpga. By the way,
>
> May I ask what made you change your mind like that? First you wrote
> that Vince was assigned to to that, and now it's suddenly you? As far
> as I can see, you have not participated in any SoCPGA related code
> reviews or discussions in 2014 at all, so what would be the
> difference?

Touche...

>
>> what is the difference between a Maintainer and a custodian? I don't
>> understand why if Chin-Liang and myself are listed as Maintainer(s) for
>> SOCFPGA, we would have to rely on Marek to pull in our patches for SOCFPGA?
>
> A maintainer is someone who developed some piece of code and feels
> responsible for it - who is available as contact person for questions,
> or who will be asked to fix any bugs in that code.
>
> A Custodian is "one that guards and protects or maintains" [1], i. e.
> he is responsible for maintaining the design principles of U-Boot and
> the code quality even for code he did not work on himself, and for
> patches submitted by others. This is a job that carries a much higher
> responsibility than just maintaining your own code. He will interface
> to the actual maintainers of the respective code, negotiatiate
> solutions and decide in case of conflicts.
>
> [1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/custodian
>
>> Yes, this is the repo will be the one that we will use. I have a couple
>> of other things on my plate at the moment and will populate this repo
>> shortly.
>
> Thats great, as it means you will not lose any efforts when we start
> with u-boot-socfpga now, as you then can start with synchronized
> repositories right from the beginning.
>

FWIW, I strongly oppose assigning an external person to be the custodian
for socfpga. Marek is fantastic developer, and my only issue is that he
is not an Altera employee. I contend that an in-house custodian for
socfpga is the best choice. I know that my voice carries little weight
here, but I would, at least, think I have Altera's best interest in mind
here.

Also, I went back and look at the "flurry" of patches for socfpga, and I
must commend Tom Rini on a fantastic job for applying the patches. I was
only able to find 1 patch that needed addressing:

[socfpga: generic board for socfpga] from Pavel Machek

For now, I have it applied to

git://git.rocketboards.org/u-boot-socfpga-next.git for_next branch.

There are a few patches that needs to be addressed in the mailing list,
but I don't see any other patches that needs to be applied at this
moment. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

To summarize, have we failed as maintainers of socfpga that you would
need to assign somebody else to be the custodian for socfpga? If
so, I apologize and would like for you to reconsider your position and
let us try to do a better job.

Thanks,
Dinh