Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] get_maintainer.pl: Default to --no-git-fallback

[Kirill Batuzov]

On Tue, 21 Oct 2014, Markus Armbruster wrote:

> "Michael S. Tsirkin" <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 03:04:44PM +0100, Peter Maydell wrote:
> >> On 20 October 2014 10:19, Markus Armbruster <address@hidden> wrote:
> >> > Contributors rely on this script to find maintainers to copy.  The
> >> > script falls back to git when no exact MAINTAINERS pattern matches.
> >> > When that happens, recent contributors get copied, which tends not be
> >> > particularly useful.  Some contributors find it even annoying.
> >> >
> >> > Flip the default to "don't fall back to git".  Use --git-fallback to
> >> > ask it to fall back to git.
> >> >
> >> > Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <address@hidden>
> >> 
> >> Good idea.
> >> 
> >> Reviewed-by: Peter Maydell <address@hidden>
> >> 
> >> -- PMM
> >
> > What do you want to happen in this case?
> > Won't this cause even more patches to fall to the floor?
> >
> > The benefit seems marginal, the risk high.
> >
> > I would be OK with this if you also go over history
> > and assign maintainers to all core files which lack
> > maintainers listed in MAINTAINERS.
> 
> Define "core files".
>

Files implementing common infrastructure used in different guests on
different hosts? This probably is the least covered in MAINTAINERS part.
MAINTAINERS covers pretty well target architectures, host architectures
and guest machines (each of them is a well-defined independent subsystem).
On the other hand a lot of common files are missing from MAINTAINERS:
cpu-exec.c, hw/core/*.c, cputlb.c etc.

> I don't think I (or anyone) should *assign* maintainers.  We've always
> let people volunteer for the maintainer role.  Prodding them to
> volunteer is fine, but shanghaiing them outright is a different matter.
> 

May be we can start searching for volunteers by making a list of
unmaintained files grouped by subsystems? It is hard to find volunteers
when we do not know exactly what we need them for.

> We do have too may files lacking maintainers.  See
> 
>     Subject: MAINTAINERS leaves too many files uncovered
>     Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 11:19:44 +0200
>     Message-ID: <address@hidden>
>     https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2014-10/msg01951.html
> 
> > I'm yet to see contributors who are annoyed but we
> > can always blacklist specific people.
> 
> Quite a few have grumbled, both in this thread and elsewhere.  Usually,
> for every one who grumbles, there are several quietly annoyed.
> 
>