Re: [PATCH RFC 1/2] MAINTAINERS: Add "R:" designated-reviewers tag

[Josh Boyer]

On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 1:59 PM, Joe Perches <joe@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, 2014-06-02 at 10:48 -0700, josh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>> On Mon, Jun 02, 2014 at 10:22:58AM -0700, Joe Perches wrote:
>> > On Mon, 2014-06-02 at 10:00 -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
>> > > A ksummit-discuss email thread looked at the difficulty recruiting
>> > > and retaining reviewers.
>> >
>> > []
>> >
>> > > Paul Walmsley also noted the need for patch
>> > > submitters to know who the key reviewers are and suggested adding an
>> > > "R:" tag to the MAINTAINERS file to record this information on a
>> > > per-subsystem basis.
>> >
>> > I'm not sure of the value of this.
>> >
>> > Why not just mark the actual reviewers as maintainers?
>>
>> As discussed in the kernel summit discussion, being a regular patch
>> reviewer isn't the same thing as being *the* maintainer.
>
> I think it's not particularly important or valuable
> here to make that distinction.
>
> What real difference does it make?

It depends.  If the Maintainer moves to a model where patches must be
reviewed before they are added to the tree, then having a designated
reviewer helps.  It gives the patch submitter another person to
include, and if the Reviewer acks a patch, they know it's much more
likely to make it in-tree.

If the tree isn't managed that way, then Reviewer/Maintainer is a bit
less distinctive, but it still provides at least some indication that
a "maintainer" looked at the patch instead of having it just sit on
the list.

josh
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