Re: Maintainer policy for GDB

Daniel Jacobowitz
2005-11-25T20:43:53Z

On Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 10:08:31PM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 11:04:54 -0500
> > From: Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>
> >
> > You see, I was thinking a couple of days, or up to a week.
>
> Two days is awfully too few, IMO. I could think of many reasons why I
> could be away of my mail for two days. Not everyone hacks GCC and GDB
> for their living and have an opportunity to read gdb-patches during
> office hours.

I apologize. I realize this is grammatically busted usage of English,
but I've never been able to break myself of it. Here's the one I was
using:

couple
n 1: a small indefinite number; "he's coming for a couple of
days"

i.e. I meant 3-5, not two, which I agree is far too short. I'm more
than comfortable with Joel's 7-10 days, also.

[By the way, I don't generally have an opportunity to read gdb-patches
during office hours either. I do it more than I feel I ought to.]

> > Do you want to be the one to explain to all the latter group "no,
> > sorry, we can't look at your patch for three weeks"?
>
> I think there's a misunderstanding: 3 weeks was suggested as a
> _timeout_, i.e. an extreme value beyond which we behave as if the
> responsible maintainer were not there. It is not suggested as the
> _average_ value. If, several months from now, we see that the average
> delay is anywhere near 3 weeks, I will be the first one to suggest we
> do something about it.

What are you suggesting doing with the current set of maintainers,
then? The fact remains that for most patch review, three weeks is
currently optimistic.

> > With just a week, it's easy to give the contributor feedback on the
> > style et cetera - which often takes a week anyway - while waiting
> > for comments from the responsible party.
>
> That's another misunderstanding: there's no need for the other
> maintainers to wait before they post comments about the proposed
> patches, not even for a minute. They could do that right away. One
> needs to wait only for the approval. Any other comments, style or
> otherwise, need not wait.
>
> In other words, the timeout is not a silence period during which no
> one can say anything about the proposed patch. It's the max time we
> give the responsible maintainer to review the patch and make up her
> mind whether to approve it.

Of course. But when the contributor asks us "OK, can it be applied
now", we have to answer "please let's wait 19 more days".

> > But alternatively, we could use a long timeout and an aggressive
> > policy for maintainers who time out repeatedly - politely remove
> > them from responsibility (shift into the authorized section). How
> > do you feel about that?
>
> Responsible maintainers that time out repeatedly should be asked to
> do better or to step down.

Great, I agree.

--
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery, LLC