Re: [maint] GDB needs more local maintainers

[Andrew Cagney <ac131313@redhat.com>]

David, I wish it were this simple.

At one point, in the deep dark past the `solution' adopted was to `throw 
more maintainers at the problem'.  If you think this is starting to 
sound like `throwing more programmers at the problem' then it is :-(

One thing that has changed since then is for for developers to recognize 
that that while they might have a short (weeks) to medium (months) term 
interest in a specific aspect of GDB, they don't have the level of 
commitment needed to maintain that body of code.

This is why the maintainers file contains things like: send tricky ones 
to person XXX; or person XXX can make changes.  While XXX can take 
certain liberties it is clear that `the buck' doesn't stop with them.  A 
more senior maintainer is free to approve/make changes.  I would be 
wasting my time if I try to chase after them with a patch.

This is also why I try to encourage developers (remember I also act in 
that role) to discuss / negotiate technical issues up front.  That way 
they can be largly pre-approved.  Such `fairly obvious' change can 
(especially when the issues have been trialed on a branch, but with the 
help of a global maintainer and 100% public) then be committed using a 
24-48hr rolling schedule (but with with definite timeouts so that 
everyone has a chance to clean up the fallout - cf the interps patch).

Finally, this is also why it is important for maintainers to recognize 
that it is some times time to let go and move on.  Perhaphs dropping 
certain areas of responsibility (and picking others up).  (On this last 
point, it is good to see that all the maintainers are currently doing this.)

Andrew