[Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] Recruitment (Reviewers, Testers, Maintainers, Hobbyists)

Jonathan Corbet corbet at lwn.net
Thu Jul 16 15:41:25 UTC 2015


On Thu, 16 Jul 2015 08:04:30 -0700
Tim Bird <tim.bird at sonymobile.com> wrote:

> On 07/16/2015 06:47 AM, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> > One of the issues with newcomers coming to development of the Linux
> > kernel, is that every maintainer is different. We should be trying
> > harder to let people know what we prefer. Every maintainer expects
> > something different, but it's up to the maintainer to explicitly let
> > others know what they want. You can't expect everyone to read your mind.  
> 
> I agree with this completely.  When you switch systems (which I've done
> something like 5 times in the last 2 years), you are essentially a newbie
> in that new system.
> 
> How about putting some notes in the MAINTAINER file for things like
> this, that some get_maintainer.pl option could show? 
> We could use a I: prefix, for "Instructions:"  (only because 'N:'
> is already used.)

So somebody has to play the devil's advocate and ask this question...
Are we really better off documenting the fact that what looks like a
single project is actually a collection of a hundred or so idiosyncratic
fiefdoms with their own contact protocols, coding styles, beer
preferences, and more? Or perhaps we might think about gravitating toward
a more uniform set of conventions?  Preferably the ones I use? :)

Seriously, this area is a minefield for new developers; it can be
discouraging to put together your first patch, carefully follow
everything found in SubmittingPatches, CodingStyle, SubmitChecklist, and
HOWTO, appease the checkpatch.pl beast, carefully run get_maintainer.pl
with the correct command-line options, and follow all the suggestions
provided by reddit, Phoronix and 4chan, only to be told that the patch
came in during the wrong phase of the moon and they really should have
known better.

Not sure what the real answer is, but something tells me that adding a
new domain-specific language to MAINTAINERS isn't quite it :)

jon


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