[U-Boot] [STATUS] Help needed - urgently

[Kumar Gala]

On Nov 15, 2011, at 9:01 AM, Wolfgang Denk wrote:

> Hello all,
> 
> I guess most of you will already have noticed that my activity on the
> mailing list has significantly declined recently. I'm sorry for that,
> but I find myself in a situation where I have even less time
> available for U-Boot than usually. In the result, the number of
> unapplied (and sometimes unreviewed) patches is growing and growing.
> 
> I need your help. we need to find a way to distribute the workload
> for "general" patches (i. e. those that don't fall obviously into the
> responsibility of a specific custodian) across more shoulders than
> just mine. Pressure on me has been building up already for some time,
> and now we've reached the point where we need to find a solution.
> 
> 
> One possible approach has been suggested before:
> 
>>>> Maybe the load can be spread here - maintainers can put these in
>>>> designated
>>>> branches in their repositories. I know this will cause the odd
>>>> conflict,
>>> 
>>> If you script this (based on pwapply) you can bail out early if the
>>> patch is no longer in state "New".
>>> 
>>>> but we (the maintainers) could also periodically sync between each
>>>> other.
>>>> Another alternative is to create a new repo that all the
>>>> custodians have
>>>> access to...
>>> 
>>> That would be easy to do...
>> 
>> Maybe that's what we do - Once a patch reaches maturity (a revision
>> with an Ack and maybe a Tested-by) any maintainer can just put it in
>> the 'next' repo - You can always veto it and not pull it into
>> mainline anyway, but at least it gives everyone a semi-stable
>> platform to base patches for the next merge window
> 
> I would like to try this out now, taking effect immediately.
> 
> I have created a new repository "u-boot-staging", where all current
> custodians (should) have write access to.
> 
> My proposal is as follows (please feel free to comment):
> 
> - Any custodian is able (and encouraged) to pick up unapplied patches
>  that have "reached maturity" (ideally an Ack and maybe a
>  Tested-by), but at least no negative feedback on the mailing list,
>  and re-review these. If they are considered OK and do not cause any
>  new build issues, they can be applied.  Please don't forget to
>  update the entries in Patchwork.
> 
> - To ensure quality, no custodian should apply his own patches.
> 
> - After reviewing and build testing (MAKEALL for at least two
>  different architectures) the stuff can be pushed into a _branch_ of
>  the "u-boot-staging" repository.  I suggest to use the custodian's
>  e-mail address as branch name.
> 
> - After that, the custodian can send a pull request to me.
> 
> 
> Please let's try if this works.  If you have any suggestions how to
> help better, please don't hesitate to tell us.

On suggestion I'd have is we improve our use of patchworks.  Right now there is way too much 'stale' on patchworks so its difficult to extract what needs to be looked at from what might be owned by existing maintainers.

- k