Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 4/4] get_maintainer.pl: point at --git-fallback instead of enabling it automatically

[Thomas Huth]

On Wed, 22 Oct 2014 11:56:30 +0200
Paolo Bonzini <address@hidden> wrote:

> 
> 
> On 10/22/2014 11:33 AM, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 11:08:22AM +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> >> The list emitted by --git-fallback often leads inexperienced contributors
> >> to add pointless CCs.  While not discouraging usage of --git-fallback,
> >> we want to warn the contributors about using their common sense.
> >>
> >> So, default to *not* enabling --git-fallback, but print a message if
> >> none of the files has a match against MAINTAINERS.  Of course the
> >> message is hidden by --no-git-fallback.
> >>
> >> Examples:
> >>
> >> 1) No maintainer for all specified files, print message:
> >>
> >>     $ scripts/get_maintainer.pl -f util/cutils.c
> >>     No maintainers found.
> >>     You may want to try --git-fallback to find recent contributors.
> >>     Do not blindly cc: them on patches!  Use common sense.
> >>
> > 
> > Does it make sense for util/cutils.c?
> > I doubt it, so we are just giving useless advice?
> > 
> > --git-blame might be a better fallback here?
> > How about an entry in MAINTAINERS to trigger git-blame?
> 
> We cannot know which is better.  The right thing to do would be to use
> git-blame *manually*, so as to find who touched the function you are
> touching now.

Maybe you could at least also add "--git-blame" to the message that is
printed out here - so in case --git-fallback does not print anything at
all due to the 1-year limitation, the user has at least another thing to
try?

 Thomas