[U-Boot-Users] Patch queue outlook?

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Brad,

in message <17415.38634.967662.176108 at waldo.lisle.iphase.com> you wrote:
> 
> I see there has been some promising commit activity in your U-Boot git
> tree over the past couple of weeks, tho it is not always clear to me
> what drives the choice of patches being applied.

There are several factors:

* customers who pay for a port obviously receive highest priority

* all remaining patches are normally processed sequentially, as time
  permits

* However, there are a couple of non-trivial issues or problem  areas
  where many patches have been submitted that affect the same area of
  code;  often an additional complication is that I have only limited
  or no access to hardware that can be used  to  test  the  suggested
  fixes. Such areas are NAND support and the CFI driver.
  
  For NAND support, I tried how it works to  use  a  testing  branch.
  This   was   somewhat  frustrating,  as  feedback  from  the  board
  maintainers was epsilon.

  For CFI suport, Stefan Roese volunteered to integrate all submitted
  patches. Stefan is a precious, but unfortunately limited resource.

> Can you give us some statistics on the state of your patch queue and
> perhaps an idea about when you might get to the bulk of the patches
> submitted during the last quarter of last year (and earlier)?

I have it on my list every day (and night) and  weekend,  but  always
other, higher prirority things need to be done first.

> If you don't reject a patch immediately on submission is it likely
> it will be committed some day?

Probably. In case of complexer patches I often don't have the time to
perform thorough initial checking, so it may happen that I  chose  to
reject  such  apatch  later,  when  I  try to add it. But ideally all
submitted patches are in my queue and will be processed one day.

> Should I wait to submit patches which depend on patches already
> submitted by others or just assume the previous patches will be
> committed eventually?

You can assume that previous patches will  be  applied,  but  you  do
yourself  a  favour if you mention any such prerequisites in your own
patch submission.


Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
Software Engineering:  Embedded and Realtime Systems,  Embedded Linux
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd at denx.de
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