Re: Maintainer policy for GDB

[Daniel Jacobowitz <drow at false dot org>]

On Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 10:08:31PM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 11:04:54 -0500
> > From: Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>
> > 
> > You see, I was thinking a couple of days, or up to a week.
> 
> Two days is awfully too few, IMO.  I could think of many reasons why I
> could be away of my mail for two days.  Not everyone hacks GCC and GDB
> for their living and have an opportunity to read gdb-patches during
> office hours.

I apologize.  I realize this is grammatically busted usage of English,
but I've never been able to break myself of it.  Here's the one I was
using:

  couple
       n 1: a small indefinite number; "he's coming for a couple of
            days"

i.e. I meant 3-5, not two, which I agree is far too short.  I'm more
than comfortable with Joel's 7-10 days, also.

[By the way, I don't generally have an opportunity to read gdb-patches
during office hours either.  I do it more than I feel I ought to.]

> > Do you want to be the one to explain to all the latter group "no,
> > sorry, we can't look at your patch for three weeks"?
> 
> I think there's a misunderstanding: 3 weeks was suggested as a
> _timeout_, i.e. an extreme value beyond which we behave as if the
> responsible maintainer were not there.  It is not suggested as the
> _average_ value.  If, several months from now, we see that the average
> delay is anywhere near 3 weeks, I will be the first one to suggest we
> do something about it.

What are you suggesting doing with the current set of maintainers,
then?  The fact remains that for most patch review, three weeks is
currently optimistic.

> > With just a week, it's easy to give the contributor feedback on the
> > style et cetera - which often takes a week anyway - while waiting
> > for comments from the responsible party.
> 
> That's another misunderstanding: there's no need for the other
> maintainers to wait before they post comments about the proposed
> patches, not even for a minute.  They could do that right away.  One
> needs to wait only for the approval.  Any other comments, style or
> otherwise, need not wait.
> 
> In other words, the timeout is not a silence period during which no
> one can say anything about the proposed patch.  It's the max time we
> give the responsible maintainer to review the patch and make up her
> mind whether to approve it.

Of course.  But when the contributor asks us "OK, can it be applied
now", we have to answer "please let's wait 19 more days".

> > But alternatively, we could use a long timeout and an aggressive
> > policy for maintainers who time out repeatedly - politely remove
> > them from responsibility (shift into the authorized section).  How
> > do you feel about that?
> 
> Responsible maintainers that time out repeatedly should be asked to
> do better or to step down.

Great, I agree.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery, LLC