From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 27772 invoked by alias); 25 Mar 2004 05:59:28 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gdb-patches-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-patches-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 27765 invoked from network); 25 Mar 2004 05:59:26 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO takamaka.act-europe.fr) (142.179.108.108) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 25 Mar 2004 05:59:26 -0000 Received: by takamaka.act-europe.fr (Postfix, from userid 507) id 7C78347D62; Wed, 24 Mar 2004 21:59:25 -0800 (PST) Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 05:59:00 -0000 From: Joel Brobecker To: Ian Lance Taylor , Robert Dewar , gdbheads@gnu.org, gdb-patches@sources.redhat.com Subject: Re: [Gdbheads] A small patch case study, -file-list-exec-source-files Message-ID: <20040325055925.GS1104@gnat.com> References: <20040225040059.GB19094@white> <16456.65451.461753.66554@localhost.redhat.com> <20040306155700.GA9439@white> <20040311132508.GA2504@white> <20040323130900.GA17339@white> <40605C9F.2050700@gnat.com> <20040325043648.GA20454@white> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040325043648.GA20454@white> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i X-SW-Source: 2004-03/txt/msg00592.txt.bz2 > I completely agree with Ian here. So the question is, > is patch review the most important aspect of being a GNU GDB maintainer? > > How many GDB maintainers would answer yes to this? GDB is a volunteer work! If you keep insisting that a maintainer have to review patches within a given timeframe and that they should step down if they can't, then I think we're going to lose a lot of maintainers. Will GDB really be better off? I think not. I think you're looking at the wrong solution. The real solution, according to me, is not to push away good maintainers that have only so much time, but to help the group of maintainers to act as a team. When one maintainer is too busy, then the rest of the team should be allowed to step up and help the busy maintainer by reviewing patches and answering emails in his place. The real problem is that GDB currently has bottlenecks, and that's the issue that needs solving, one way or the other. I'm only a contributor, but I have barely enough time to followup on the review of my own patches. I have messages from some maintainers following up on my own messages that I need to answer and have been sitting in mail mailbox for weeks. How can I, a fairly regular contributor, ever ask/force volunteers maintainers to do any more than they are already doing? -- Joel