Re: Maintainer policy for GDB

[David Carlton <david.carlton@sun.com>]

On Sat, 19 Nov 2005 12:37:54 +0200, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> said:
>> From: David Carlton <david.carlton@sun.com>

>> For example, would you be interested in being responsible for djgpp
>> and/or documentation under the proposed new rules?  If so, why?

> After thinking about this for a while, I concluded that my main
> reasons for being interested in becoming a responsible maintainer is
> that I'd like to influence the development and maintenance of those
> specific areas according to ideas I have.

[ Indexing example snipped. ]

> Now, under the suggested rules, somebody who is authorized to approve
> patches to the documentation could commit changes that don't fit my
> plan about indexing, without asking me, right?

Yup.

> How can I shape the documentation according to my ideas if I don't
> have the final say?

By acting exactly the way you do now.  Anybody paying attention to GDB
development knows that you're a very fast and responsive reviewer,
that your suggestions are always well-considered and almost always an
improvement (no criticism implied, we're all fallible), and that in
situations where there's a disagreement, you're willing to discuss the
issue in a reasonable fashion.

So I'm pretty sure that people would continue to run documentation
patches by you in the new system.  They probably won't do it quite as
consistently as they do now, but they'll do it most of the time,
especially the core GDB developers.  And (correct me if I'm wrong), I
bet that, even in situations where they don't run patches by you in
advance, you'll still comment on those patches when they're committed.
And in those situations, I bet most of the time people will make the
corrections you suggest.

I don't think people will make those corrections 100% of the time; and
if somebody gets into a habit of not running doc patches by you in
advance, maybe you might get annoyed.  But I'm pretty sure that you
would still have a quite significant role, indeed the primary role, in
shaping the documentation under the new system.

Of course, I could be wrong.  And I'll probably go back into hiding
now, anyways.  But I wanted to respond to your message, because
because I appreciate your taking my question seriously.

David Carlton
david.carlton@sun.com