Re: [PATCH] [443/2many] MAINTAINERS - HIBERNATION (aka Software Suspend, aka swsusp):

[Kyle Moffett <mrmacman_g4@mac.com>]

On Aug 14, 2007, at 19:24:30, Dave Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 14, 2007 at 11:22:37AM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
>> On Tue, 14 Aug 2007 11:15:41 -0700 (PDT) Linus Torvalds  
>> <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
>>> In other words, it would be much better to just have per-file  
>>> markers, along with some per-subdirectory stuff or similar.
>>
>> And a `make maintainers' target to pull it all together..
>>
>> (perhaps we could add a
>>
>> 	maintainer <keyword>
>>
>> record to Kconfig, then `make maintainers' goes and looks up  
>> <keyword> somewhere and does something with it)
>
> Not everything that's in MAINTAINERS has a Kconfig entry though, so  
> it really needs to live in the .c/.h files.

How about making "MAINTAINERS" operate vaguely similar  
to .gitignore?  You would need 4 pieces

(a)  A set of "Maintainers" files sprinkled around the source tree  
where they make sense.  Any file references would be done using  
relative paths and patterns.  For example, there would be one in the  
root directory which has:

[EVERYTHING ELSE]
P: Various Linux Kernel Developers
L: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
F: *


Then (using the earlier SUSPEND TO RAM example) in the kernel/power/ 
Maintainers file, you would have:

[SUSPEND TO RAM]
P: Pavel Machek
M: pavel@suse.cz
P: Rafael J. Wysocki
M: rjw@sisk.pl
L: linux-pm@lists.linux-foundation.org
S: Maintained
F: *


Now that at least *one* of the maintainers files has the info for  
Pavel and Rafael, you could just use this simpler form in any other  
Maintainers file and still have it find their entries:

[SUSPEND TO RAM]
F: linux/suspend.h
F: linux/freezer.h
F: linux/pm.h
F: asm-*/suspend.h


(b)  You would need a little tool which generates a combined  
MAINTAINERS file when "make maintainers" is run.  It would iterate  
over the directory tree and combine entries with the same names.   
This also allows you to group people with their associated files even  
if they work on the same subsystem/driver; they would be listed in  
the respective sub-Maintainer-files, but when built it would mention  
both of them.  The intent would not be a MAINTAINERS file which is  
perfectly human-readable, it would be one which can be efficiently  
grepped by a helper tool to find the necessary information.  When the  
resulting MAINTAINERS file is built it would include the source  
"Maintainers" file for each chunk right before said chunk, for example:

[SUSPEND TO RAM]

Origin: kernel/power/Maintainers
P: Pavel Machek
M: pavel@suse.cz
P: Rafael J. Wysocki
M: rjw@sisk.pl
L: linux-pm@lists.linux-foundation.org
S: Maintained
F: kernel/power/*

Origin: include/Maintainers
F: include/linux/suspend.h
F: include/linux/freezer.h
F: include/linux/pm.h
F: include/asm-*/suspend.h



(c)  You would need a tool to go digging through the built  
MAINTAINERS file based on a file, an email address, a subsystem-name- 
regexp, etc.  It would return all matching entries, with the desired  
fields user-selectable.


(d)  You would need a little tool to poke at git similar to the shell  
script Linus posted which dug through the recent commit history  
looking for people doing significant *original* modifications (IE:  
first person to sign-off) on code for which they aren't a maintainer,  
as well as "Maintainers" who haven't recently signed off at all on  
code for which they are responsible.  The output might be something  
like this:

> ## Historical significance: 6 months
> ## Uncategorized file threshold: >10 changes or >20 sign-offs
> ## New maintainer threshold: >20 changes or >40 sign-offs
> ## Neglectful-maintainer threshold: <5 changes and <10 sign-offs
>
> [SUSPEND TO RAM]
> Nigel Cunningham should probably be a maintainer:
>   kernel/power/* (130 changes, 132 sign-offs)
>   include/linux/suspend.h (29 changes, 29 sign-offs)
>
> [RANDOM UNMAINTAINED DRIVER]
> J. Random Hacker has neglected his maintainership:
>   drivers/random/unmaintained.c (0 changes, 0 sign-offs)
>
> [UNCATEGORIZED]
> John Linville should probably add/update a Maintainers entry:
>   drivers/wireless/newly_added_driver.c (142 changes and 453 sign- 
> offs)


Hopefully that kind of tool would make it a hundred times easier to  
keep an eye out for out-dated entries as well as missing new  
entries.  The obsolescence-verification would be based on the rapidly- 
moving git changelog, so it would pick up new maintainers quite  
quickly, as well as noticing uncategorized source files and  
neglectful maintainers.

Soon as I get moved into my new place I'll see what kind of Perl  
scripts I can hack up


Cheers,
Kyle Moffett