Re: GDB's roles

Andrew Cagney
2003-02-21T20:21:04Z

> On Fri, Feb 21, 2003 at 01:48:06PM -0500, Andrew Cagney wrote:
>
>> 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.

> [...] The set of core maintainers breaks down into specific
> maintainers for core components.

The paragraph:

>> 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.

is trying to express this.

core different to maintainers of sub-systems such as the target, native,
language or host. The critical nature of a core maintainer isn't there
though. Typically maintainers of nat, tdep, et.al. code are in a `if it
ain't broke / deprecated, don't fix it' situtation. While fixes/patches
should make it into the next release, they are not so much on the
critical path.

Contrast that to my current core activity of rewriting frames. I'm on
the hook for everything.

Anyway, the main thing is that my post is a `white paper', a discussion
`puff piece'.

Andrew