[Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] (group) maintainership models

[Darren Hart]

On Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 07:57:04AM +0200, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 22, 2016 at 10:02 PM, Darren Hart <dvhart at infradead.org> wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 02:11:58PM +0200, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> >> In my very first KS I found the maintainership model presentations
> >> (x86-tip & armsoc) rather interesting. And last year we've had an
> >> ad-hoc discussion about group maintainership again. I think drm&i915
> >> would be an interesting case since over the past year I've done some
> >> changes which are at the edge of what's common in the kernel, and it
> >> seems to work (at least for us) fairly well. I discussed this a bit
> >> with a few folks at ELC San Diego too.
> >>
> >> Short summary: i915 has now a two-level maintenance model with 2
> >> maintainers (who take the blame) and 15 people who can push patches.
> >> In a way a rather big group, but not so big that people don't all know
> >> each another any more personally. We have some detailed docs about the
> >> patch flow and expectations:
> >>
> >> https://01.org/linuxgraphics/gfx-docs/maintainer-tools/drm-intel.html
> >>
> >> and about the dim tool used to support this all
> >>
> >> https://01.org/linuxgraphics/gfx-docs/maintainer-tools/dim.html
> >>
> >> But I think the more interesting bits are why I decided to try this
> >> out, what I hoped would happen, what I feared might happen. And with 1
> >> year of experience, what actually happens and what I think is needed
> >> to make this work and an actual benefit over more traditional
> >> maintainer models. And of course I'd like to compare notes with other
> >> group maintainers.
> >
> > I'd be interested in the discussion. I think having it would also serve to
> > minimize the differences between policies across subsystems (which is a common
> > topic people have raised with me).
> 
> Not sure I'm helping, since I think this new i915 model makes the
> spread in different policies worse ;-) What do you have in mind here?

Just talking about what maintainers are doing, which is always evolving, will
help keep us in sync, and adopting improved methods.

-- 
Darren Hart
Intel Open Source Technology Center