Re: [Qemu-devel] [Qemu devel PATCH] MAINTAINERS: Add entries for Smartfusion2

[Philippe Mathieu-Daudé]

On 11/10/2017 09:56 AM, Peter Maydell wrote:
> On 10 November 2017 at 00:22, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé <address@hidden> wrote:
>> On 11/09/2017 08:55 PM, Peter Maydell wrote:
>>> I don't in general expect to take pull requests from
>>> everybody listed as a maintainer in the MAINTAINERS file.
>>> That just means "I'm going to be reviewing and should
>>> be cc'd on patches". Pull requests are sent by people
>>> who are maintainers for a subsystem. Rule of thumb:
>>> unless somebody asks you to send a pull request, you
>>> don't need to do it.
>>
>> Ok, please apologize my misunderstanding. I still think the M: entry
>> stand for 'Maintainer' instead of 'Mail', and still don't understand the
>> difference with a "Designated reviewer" (R: entry):
>>
>>         M: Mail patches to: FullName <address@hidden>
>>         R: Designated reviewer: FullName <address@hidden>
>>            These reviewers should be CCed on patches.
>>
>> "Designated reviewer" seems to duplicate the M: entry and is therefore
>> confusing. Can we simply remove it instead?
> 
> I hadn't realized we had an 'R:' tag in MAINTAINERS...
> 
>> --
>> Some people are not content with the amount of mail they get, and would
>> like to be CCed on patches for areas they do not maintain.  Let them
>> satisfy their own appetite for qemu-devel messages.
>>
>> Seriously: the purpose here is a bit different from the Linux kernel.
>> While Linux uses "R" to designate non-maintainers for reviewing patches
>> in a given area, in QEMU I would also like to use "R" so that people can
>> delegate sending pull requests while keeping some degree of oversight.
>> --
> 
> So, my view, based on what happens in practice:
>  * "maintainer" means you are in effect accepting some responsibility
>    for the continued maintenance of some bit of the codebase, ie
>    you actually will review stuff
>  * "reviewer" is a bit weird but I guess is just asking for cc:
>    without promising to actually do anything
>  * somebody who sends me pull requests is effectively somebody we've
>    given the ability to make direct more-or-less unchecked commits
>    to master, so that is given out more sparingly and for larger
>    subsystems

Thanks for clarifying this!

This is more understandable (to me) than the "QEMU Maintainers" section
entries description.

> But MAINTAINERS is mostly about what submitters need to do (ie
> who to send patchmails to), so it doesn't particularly document
> how patches flow onward into master, which varies. (For instance
> the block layer folks have a two-level setup where some trees
> get merged into others before they go to master. ARM devboards
> go through me, and "maintainer" just means I let somebody else
> deal with the device specifics if possible but am still the
> reviewer of last resort.)

Ok :)

Regards,

Phil.