Re: which patches to review

[Elena Zannoni <ezannoni at redhat dot com>]

David S. Miller writes:
 > 
 > [ I deleted this from my inbox by accident so I'm replying
 >   to it by hand... sorry. ]
 > 
 >    Elena Zannoni said:
 > 
 >    could I suggest you post a list of pointers to your pending
 >    patches?
 > 
 > Ok, but I thought sending emails with "RFA" in the subject to
 > this list was sufficient to say which patches I want reviewed?
 > RFA means "request for approval", you can simply scan the GDB
 > list archives for every posting I made starting with RFA in
 > the subject, and if nobody has replied to it yet it means its
 > still pending.

You submitted an unusually large number of patches in a very short
time.  Plus you have committed and reverted some. The status of each
patch is not always clear.

 > 
 > I'm sending in a lot of changes, true.  But what really eats me is
 > that everyone besides me sticks to one of two things in order to
 > actually get work done with GDB:
 > 
 > 1) Become maintainer, so you can just post patches to the target
 >    you maintain and you don't need to wait for review before
 >    installation.
 > 
 > 2) Stick to "obvious" fixes and therefore can just check them in.

This is not true. Look through the archives for this mailing list.

 > 
 > All day long these people get to install their fixes, yet their work
 > is not necessarily easier to review nor the changes more obviously
 > correct than mine.  Yet I am the one with a 30 patch backlog at this
 > point farting in my chair waiting for patches to be review before I
 > can work on new things.  30 patches basically means I maintain 30
 > checked out source trees waiting for approval so that I avoid
 > dependency problems.
 > 

In my opinion, people have learned that since there may be only one
person responsible to review their patches, it make sense to send only
a few at the time. The reviewer's bandwith is limited.

 > And now I'm being told that I have to periodically post some kind
 > of "scoreboard" indicating what I want reviewed.
 > 

This is not the rule, but since your case is somewhat unusual, I
thought this would help the review process. You don't have to comply.

 > I'm spending all of my time in patch mangement, going above and beyond
 > what I really should have to do to get fixes installed (especially the
 > easier ones).  That is my main point.

Everybody goes through that. 

 > 
 > However, since my goal is to work with people and get the fixes
 > installed, I will be more mindful in the future of people's schedules
 > and the time they are able to contribute to GDB patch review.  How
 > does that sound?
 > 

Better.

 > Anyways, back to the original question, the probably highest priority
 > (read as: one that causes the most dependencies for other changes I
 >  want to submit) is this one:
 > 
 > 	http://sources.redhat.com/ml/gdb-patches/2002-04/msg00710.html
 > 
 > Which by the "multi-arch" rule I though I could install but Andrew
 > forced me to revert the changes until "sparc developers" (note the
 > plural) make some commentary.  As far as I am aware this means Michael
 > Snyder, which is just one person :-)

Exactly, just one person.