[U-Boot] [RFC PATCH 3/5] MAINTAINERS.boards: add initial version

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Daniel,

In message <CACUy__UwW=4k0CwcVHhZB8JU-_Fj1cA5TNcCcCyh8E-PF9ELiQ at mail.gmail.com> you wrote:
> 
> > I understand your intentions, but I have to admit that I seriously
> > dislike this approach.  It has been quite a long way to come up with
> > boards.cfg, which would attempt to colect all relevant information for
> > a board in a single database.  In my opinion, this is still the right
> > way we should go: maintain all related information in a single place.
> 
> the main intention is to support introduction of Kconfig, which
> eventually obsoletes the mkconfig script. This, in turn obsoletes the
> information about arch, CPU/SOC, vendor, special config options in
> boards.cfg. Thus boards.cfg would only contain infos about status,
> name and mail address of board maintainers. Furthermore we still don't
> have infos about custodians and their trees in boards.cfg. As you
> stated in your other response the wiki page isn't a reliable source.
> Actually we also have some quasi-official maintainers without
> dedicated custodian trees (e.g. sandbox, driver model). Those
> maintainers are currently not recorded at all. So it makes sense to
> collect all those informations in one single MAINTAINERS file. Finally
> all contributors would have more comfort in building the relevant cc
> list for their patches.

I fully understand your intentions, and I agree with your comments
about information missing in boards.cfg.  I will also fully agree to
any statement that boards.cfg is not a perfect database for the kind
of information we would like to collect.

But I still disagree with the approach taken here.  Yes, I know that
MAINTAINERS is just following the Linux kernel example.  But I
believe devoutly that we should strive to collect all relevant data in
a single database (whichever form this may have) instead of spreading
it over a number of different files.  As is, we have to add just a
single line to boards.cfg (or, in a more general view, an atomic entry
to a database) to add a new board.  Introducing MAINTAINERS will
scatter information around, and it will become a permanent nightmare
to keep information consistent: you will have to touch several files
and always have to keep them in sync - which has never worked well.

> > In any case, scattering such data all over the place is a bad thing to
> > do.
> 
> IMHO the goal should be to have one MAINTAINERS file for maintainer
> infos and board-specific Kconfig files for all board config stuff
> (incl. include/configs/$boardname.h).

This sounds fine, but I feel the current implementation is a step
backwards.  It makes things worse than better.  [And I have to admit
that I'm not fully convinced that the end goal you pattern here would
actually work as you describe it.]

I wonder if I'm alone with my concerns?  Anybody else with comments?

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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