Re: [PATCH 1/1] MAINTAINERS: add a maintainer for the SPI NOR subsystem

[David Oberhollenzer]

On 10/18/2016 09:15 PM, Boris Brezillon wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 11:46:51 -0700
> Brian Norris <computersforpeace@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
>> + others
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 06:15:23PM +0200, Richard Weinberger wrote:
>>> On 18.10.2016 17:55, Cyrille Pitchen wrote:  
>>>> Le 18/10/2016 Ã 17:30, Richard Weinberger a Ãcrit :  
>>>>> On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 5:17 PM, Marek Vasut <marex@xxxxxxx> wrote:  
>>>>>> On 10/18/2016 04:58 PM, Cyrille Pitchen wrote:  
>>>>>>> I would like to volunteer as a maintainer for the SPI NOR part of the MTD
>>>>>>> subsystem.  
>>
>> Awesome!
>>
>>>>>>> Over the last months, a significant number of SPI NOR related patches have
>>>>>>> been submitted, some of them have been reviewed, but very few have finally
>>>>>>> been merged. Hence, the number of pending SPI NOR related patches continues
>>>>>>> to increase over the time.  
>>
>> Agreed, and sorry. But I guess the delays had the side effect of forcing
>> peoples hands, instead of delaying the inevitable.
>>
>>>>>>> Through my work on SPI NOR memories from many manufacturers over the last
>>>>>>> two years, I've gained a solid understanding of this technology.
>>>>>>> I've already helped by reviewing patches from other contributors on the
>>>>>>> mailing list, and would like to help getting those patches integrated by
>>>>>>> volunteering as a maintainer for this specific area.  
>>
>> Agreed.
>>
>>>>>>> Boris Brezillon has already stepped up as a maintainer for the NAND
>>>>>>> sub-subsystem in MTD, and the SPI NOR sub-subsystem could be handled in
>>>>>>> the same way: I would be reviewing patches touching this area, collecting
>>>>>>> them and sending pull requests to Brian Norris.  
>>>>>
>>>>> I'd suggest you send pull requests directly to Linus.
>>>>> Same for NAND.  
>>
>> I could go with either method I suppose, but I don't personally like the
>> idea of splitting out the various bits of MTD into *completely*
>> independent lines of development. As long as someone (not necessarily
>> me) can manage pulling the sub-subsystems together, I think it would
>> make sense to have 1 PR for Linus for non-UBI/FS MTD changes.
>>
>>>>>>> Signed-off-by: Cyrille Pitchen <cyrille.pitchen@xxxxxxxxx>  
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Let me know if you need co-maintainer.  
>>>>>
>>>>> +1  
>>
>> +1, I think I've not-so-subtly suggested this to Marek previously.
> 
> Okay, that's all great news!
> You can add my ack after adding Marek as a co-maintainer.
> 
>>
>>>>> While we are here, what about forming a MTD maintainer team?
>>>>> This concept works very well for other subsystems.
>>>>>  
>>>>
>>>> I totally agree with you so if Marek and you volunteer as well, your help
>>>> will be precious!  
>>>
>>> Well, my SPI-NOR fu is not strong. And UBI/UBIFS keeps me busy.
>>> But if Brian likes the idea of having a MTD maintainer team I'll offer my help.  
>>
>> I think a MTD maintainer team would be good to try, and I think it might
>> help to resolve my above complaint; a maintainer team could help to make
>> sure that everything can be coordinated in one tree + pull request,
>> without adding too many extra points of failure (e.g., so we don't have
>> awesome SPI NOR and NAND trees get bogged down by a slow MTD pull).
>>
>> Random thoughts:
>>
>>  Does it make sense to still use infradead.org? We'd need to add a few
>>  users there.
>>
>>  Trust? I have met most of you in person, but not all, and I don't have
>>  signed keys from all of you. I don't know what the best way to get a
>>  group-writeable repo with credentials for all of you that we can trust.
>>  (FWIW, neither Artem nor David met me, but they saw it fit to grant me
>>  infradead.org access ;) )
>>
>>  Coordination: how do we avoid stepping on each other's toes? We'd have
>>  to definitely 100% kill 'git push -f' and 'git rebase'. Also, would
>>  patchwork help or hurt us here? I think Boris and I have been sort of
>>  using it, but it's still got a pretty good backlog (partly real --
>>  i.e., the cause for this thread; and partly artificial, due to
>>  accounting).
> 
> I really think we should keep separate trees for the spi-nor and nand
> sub-subsystems, and then do PRs. The question is, how do we agree that
> a PR should be pulled in the MTD tree.
> 
> I guess we could have a simple rule like, if it's been reviewed by at
> least X person (I guess 2 is acceptable), then we can merge it.
> 
>>
>>  What to do about mtd-utils.git? That's been languishing a bit, and it
>>  has no release schedule. Maybe we want a plan for that too.
> 
> Richard and David had some plans for the mtd-utils repo, and I think
> they already have the permissions to push things to this repo, so the
> best solution is probably to officially promote them maintainers of
> mtd-utils.
I would volunteer to maintain it together with Richard.

As has been previously mentioned, we did a major overhaul and merged lots
of fixes locally. AFAIK Richard already has push permissions for the mtd-utils
tree on infradead.org, so it should be just a matter of making it official?


David