From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 30009 invoked by alias); 21 Feb 2003 18:43:30 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gdb-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 29984 invoked from network); 21 Feb 2003 18:43:29 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO localhost.redhat.com) (172.16.49.200) by 172.16.49.205 with SMTP; 21 Feb 2003 18:43:29 -0000 Received: from redhat.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by localhost.redhat.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id DC4042EF9 for ; Fri, 21 Feb 2003 13:48:06 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <3E567466.3040508@redhat.com> Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 18:43:00 -0000 From: Andrew Cagney User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; NetBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20030217 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: gdb@sources.redhat.com Subject: GDB's roles Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-SW-Source: 2003-02/txt/msg00474.txt.bz2 Ignoring the upper levels, I think the people listed in the gdb MAINTAINERS file find themselves filling one or more of the following roles: Elders: These are the keepers of the `GDB wisdom'. They are largely uninvolved in day to day GDB development - very hands off - very much don't given opinions except where to point out problems and flaws. Adminstrator: They do the day to day stuff: bug report unreviewed patches, ping maintainers that are asleep at the wheel, try to keep the political (RMS, et.al.) separate from the technical (this groups focus), web pages, ... Architect: Ensure that GDB is `heading in the right direction'. The actual direction is determined by the group but this person gets to watch for things going off the rails. Also, very occasionally, make architectural judgment calls. The architect is woried about key interfaces such as the architecture and target vectors. Core Maintainers: These are the people on which everyone else depends. They put themselves to the grindstone ensuring that the GDB wheel keeps turning. These are the people that do the hard work of reviewing / approving patches. These people need to be relatively reliable. These people need to be willing to do the dirty work (such as restructuring) that can't reasonably be expected of a contributor. While a core maintainer might also be responsible for certain specific areas (symtab, threads, remote), they won't cherry pick the patch list and definitly won't fall asleep at the wheel. Specific Maintainers: These are responsible for specific areas. Native, target, host and language maintainers come to mind. Their responsabilities are pretty clear, while needing to be responsive, they are not on the critical path like core maintainers. The thing I really like about the target maintainers is how they, every so often, pop up to do some maintenance (eliminate something deprecated), and then pop back down again. Developers/Contributors: These are the people that have `fun'. They have the luxury of poping up, contributing a new feature, and then simply disappearing again (typically though, a contributor ends up being the maintainer). New development, of course, needs peer review (by a maintainer) as, in the long run, it will be the [core] maintainers that have to support that code. Using the above as a reference (the last thing this list needs is a long irrelevant discussion about the semantics of each of the above :-)) it might be helpful for global maintainers to look at this so that they can see how their activities contribute to GDB. Me? Architect/Adminstrator + core. While I'm a maintainer for a few specific area's (remote and mips) that is very very low down, same for development. Andrew