Re: which patches to review

Elena Zannoni
2002-04-23T14:47:04Z

David S. Miller writes:
>
> [ I deleted this from my inbox by accident so I'm replying
> to it by hand... sorry. ]
>
> Elena Zannoni said:
>
> could I suggest you post a list of pointers to your pending
> patches?
>
> Ok, but I thought sending emails with "RFA" in the subject to
> this list was sufficient to say which patches I want reviewed?
> RFA means "request for approval", you can simply scan the GDB
> list archives for every posting I made starting with RFA in
> the subject, and if nobody has replied to it yet it means its
> still pending.

You submitted an unusually large number of patches in a very short
time. Plus you have committed and reverted some. The status of each
patch is not always clear.

>
> I'm sending in a lot of changes, true. But what really eats me is
> that everyone besides me sticks to one of two things in order to
> actually get work done with GDB:
>
> 1) Become maintainer, so you can just post patches to the target
> you maintain and you don't need to wait for review before
> installation.
>
> 2) Stick to "obvious" fixes and therefore can just check them in.

This is not true. Look through the archives for this mailing list.

>
> All day long these people get to install their fixes, yet their work
> is not necessarily easier to review nor the changes more obviously
> correct than mine. Yet I am the one with a 30 patch backlog at this
> point farting in my chair waiting for patches to be review before I
> can work on new things. 30 patches basically means I maintain 30
> checked out source trees waiting for approval so that I avoid
> dependency problems.
>

In my opinion, people have learned that since there may be only one
person responsible to review their patches, it make sense to send only
a few at the time. The reviewer's bandwith is limited.

> And now I'm being told that I have to periodically post some kind
> of "scoreboard" indicating what I want reviewed.
>

This is not the rule, but since your case is somewhat unusual, I
thought this would help the review process. You don't have to comply.

> I'm spending all of my time in patch mangement, going above and beyond
> what I really should have to do to get fixes installed (especially the
> easier ones). That is my main point.

Everybody goes through that.

>
> However, since my goal is to work with people and get the fixes
> installed, I will be more mindful in the future of people's schedules
> and the time they are able to contribute to GDB patch review. How
> does that sound?
>

Better.

> Anyways, back to the original question, the probably highest priority
> (read as: one that causes the most dependencies for other changes I
> want to submit) is this one:
>
> http://sources.redhat.com/ml/gdb-patches/2002-04/msg00710.html
>
> Which by the "multi-arch" rule I though I could install but Andrew
> forced me to revert the changes until "sparc developers" (note the
> plural) make some commentary. As far as I am aware this means Michael
> Snyder, which is just one person :-)

Exactly, just one person.