Re: [commit] Add add_setshow_enum_cmd, use in mips

[Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>]

On Mon, Nov 01, 2004 at 11:09:51PM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 00:12:57 -0500
> > From: Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>
> > Cc: Andrew Cagney <cagney@gnu.org>, gdb-patches@sources.redhat.com
> > 
> > There is no maintainer for this area, and Andrew is entitled to
> > approve patches himself, so an RFA (request for approval) seems
> > unnecessary.
> 
> Where do you see such a rule?  It's not in MAINTAINERS, AFAICT.
> 
> The rule that we do have is that if a certain maintenance area has no
> responsible maintainer, the _responsibility_ falls to the head
> maintainer.

No, we don't have any rule like that.  If a certain area has no
maintainers, the responsibility falls to the global maintainers - all
of us.

>  But my interpretation of this is that the responsibility
> is for reviewing patches, not for applying own patches without asking
> for approval.  That's because it doesn't make sense to me to decide
> that whenever some area maintainer steps down, the head maintainer is
> automatically promoted to be an expert in that area.  If you were not
> an expert in some area, the fact that the expert disappeared doesn't
> make you an expert, just the one who is burdened with more duties.

If there were an expert, who cared enough to disagree with any patches
applied, perhaps that person should be maintaining said area.  I only
see a point for maintainers to post RFAs when (A) they can not approve
the patch themselves or (B) they are not confident/happy/sure with the
approach.  We don't operate on consensus (obviously enough from reading
the lists).

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz