Re: [PATCH v2 2/3] Maintainer Handbook: Maintainer Entry Profile

[Jonathan Corbet]

On Wed, 11 Sep 2019 08:48:54 -0700
Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> As presented at the 2018 Linux Plumbers conference [1], the Maintainer
> Entry Profile (formerly Subsystem Profile) is proposed as a way to reduce
> friction between committers and maintainers and encourage conversations
> amongst maintainers about common best practices. While coding-style,
> submit-checklist, and submitting-drivers lay out some common expectations
> there remain local customs and maintainer preferences that vary by
> subsystem.
> 
> The profile contains short answers to some of the common policy questions a
> contributor might have that are local to the subsystem / device-driver, or
> otherwise not covered by the top-level process documents.
> 
> Overview: General introduction to how the subsystem operates
> Submit Checklist Addendum: Mechanical items that gate submission staging
> Key Cycle Dates:
>  - Last -rc for new feature submissions: Expected lead time for submissions
>  - Last -rc to merge features: Deadline for merge decisions
> Coding Style Addendum: Clarifications of local style preferences
> Resubmit Cadence: When to ping the maintainer
> Checkpatch / Style Cleanups: Policy on pure cleanup patches

So I'm finally back home after my European tour, and I have it on good
authority that my bag might even get here eventually too.  That means I'm
digging through a pile of docs stuff I've been neglecting badly...

My intention is to apply these patches.  But as I was reading through
them, one little nagging thing came to mind...

> See Documentation/maintainer/maintainer-entry-profile.rst for more details,
> and a follow-on example profile for the libnvdimm subsystem.

Thus far, the maintainer guide is focused on how to *be* a maintainer.
This document, instead, is more about how to deal with specific
maintainers.  So I suspect that Documentation/maintainer might be the
wrong place for it.

Should we maybe place it instead under Documentation/process, or even
create a new top-level "book" for this information?

Thanks,

jon