Re: [PATCH 1/2] ACPI/AEST: Initial AEST driver

[Darren Hart]

On Tue, Nov 30, 2021 at 09:45:46AM +0000, Marc Zyngier wrote:
> Hi Darren,
> 
> On Mon, 29 Nov 2021 20:39:23 +0000,
> Darren Hart <darren@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 
> > On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 06:09:14PM +0000, Marc Zyngier wrote:
> > > On Wed, 24 Nov 2021 17:07:07 +0000,
> > > >
> > > > diff --git a/MAINTAINERS b/MAINTAINERS
> > > > index 5250298d2817..aa0483726606 100644
> > > > --- a/MAINTAINERS
> > > > +++ b/MAINTAINERS
> > > > @@ -382,6 +382,7 @@ ACPI FOR ARM64 (ACPI/arm64)
> > > >  M:	Lorenzo Pieralisi <lorenzo.pieralisi@xxxxxxx>
> > > >  M:	Hanjun Guo <guohanjun@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > > >  M:	Sudeep Holla <sudeep.holla@xxxxxxx>
> > > > +R:	Tyler Baicar <baicar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > >  L:	linux-acpi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > >  L:	linux-arm-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (moderated for non-subscribers)
> > > >  S:	Maintained
> > > 
> > > Isn't this a bit premature? This isn't even mentioned in the commit
> > > message, only in passing in the cover letter.
> > > 
> > 
> > Hi Marc,
> > 
> > This was something I encouraged Tyler to add during internal review,
> > both in response to the checkpatch.pl warning about adding new drivers
> > as well as our interest in reviewing any future changes to the aest
> > driver. Since refactoring is common, this level made sense to me - but
> > would it be preferable to add a new entry for just the new driver Tyler
> > added?
> 
> Adding someone as the co-maintainer/co-reviewer of a whole subsystem
> (ACPI/arm64 in this case) comes, IMO, with a number of pre-requisites:
> has the proposed co-{maintainer,reviewer} contributed and/or reviewed
> a significant number of patches to that subsystem and/or actively
> participated in the public discussions on the design and the
> maintenance of the subsystem, so that their reviewing is authoritative
> enough? I won't be judge of this, but it is definitely something to
> consider.

Hi Marc,

Agreed. I applied similar criteria when considering sub maintainers for
the platform/x86 subsystem while I maintained it.

> I don't think preemptively adding someone to the MAINTAINERS entry to
> indicate an interest in a whole subsystem is the right way to do it.
> One could argue that this is what a mailing list is for! ;-) On the
> other hand, an active participation to the review process is the
> perfect way to engage with fellow developers and to grow a profile. It
> is at this stage that adding oneself as an upstream reviewer makes a
> lot of sense.

Also generally agree. In this specific case, our interest was in the
driver itself, and we had to decide between the whole subsystem or
adding another F: entry in MAINTAINERS for the specific driver. Since
drivers/acpi/arm64 only has 3 .c files in it, adding another entry
seemed premature and overly granular. Certainly a subjective thing and
we have no objection to adding the extra line if that's preferred. This
should have been noted in the commit message.

> Alternatively, adding a MAINTAINERS entry for a specific driver is
> definitely helpful and will certainly result in the listed maintainer
> to be Cc'd on changes affecting it. But I would really like this
> maintainer to actively engage with upstream, rather than simply be on
> the receiving end of a stream of changes.

Agree for subsystems. For individual drivers, I think having the author
as a reviewer is appropriate and should result in more patch reviews,
which moves us in the direction of more community participation which we
all want to see.

Thanks,

-- 
Darren Hart
Ampere Computing / OS and Kernel