[PATCHv9 01/15] submodule: add lwIP as git submodule

[Simon Goldschmidt]

On 21.09.2023 09:09, Maxim Uvarov wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Sept 2023 at 07:06, Simon Glass <sjg at google.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Maxim,
>>
>> On Thu, 14 Sept 2023 at 10:20, Maxim Uvarov <maxim.uvarov at linaro.org>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> add external lwIP library as a git submodule.
>>
>> Oh dear...what is the motivation for using a submodule?
>>
>> Our current stack is nicely integrated into U-Boot. This would make
>> moving between development branches much more painful.
>>
>> I would much prefer that we bring in the necessary code, and that you
>> send a patch every 3 months or so to deal with updates, making sure
>> there are no code-size regressions.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Simon
>>
>
> I would like the project maintainer to make the final decision.
>
> And this time I'm trying to understand how lwIP maintenance works. And how
> long does it
> take to merge a patch to lwip. For the latest Ilias comment I did a fix to
> lwip, which is pending.
> https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/lwip-devel/2023-09/msg00004.html
> and created a bug with the same patch:
> https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?64697
> And it's interesting when patches get merged.
>
> Also there is a long list of not yet accepted patches (86 open items):
> https://savannah.nongnu.org/patch/?group=lwip

The list of open bugs and patches has largely to do with users sending
things in the form of "this or that doesn't work for me, here's my poor
quality patch that fixes exactly my issue". We simply don't have the
manpower to check all that for correctness and for not breaking other
use cases. Nearly noone sends a working test case for things. But we're
trying to catch up.

> I am afraid that if lwip patch acceptance will be too slow it also can slow
> down U-Boot development.

Our response time greatly varies and greatly depends on how the supplier
of a patch works with us. Many bugs in our bug tracker are like "this
doesn't work for me, please do my work and fix it for me". Nearly noone
even sends so much as a working reproduction. We're not a project like
that. We need people needing things fixed to implement the fix.

However, if you're talking about accepting and pushing code that easy
for us to review, clear, and in good form, accepting should normally be
a matter of some days.

Regards,
Simon