Re: [lm-sensors] Hardware monitoring subsystem maintainer position is open

["David Hubbard" <david.c.hubbard@gmail.com>]

Hi Rudolf,

On 4/10/07, Rudolf Marek <r.marek@assembler.cz> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> First I would like to thank Jean for his great work even if could be seen as
> "slow". He did the perfect job, allowing only just perfect code to enter the trees.

I completely agree.

> > I haven't seen anything from Rudolf Marek, but he is definitely
> > qualified if he wants to step up. I'm personally hoping Jean changes
> > his mind.
>
> Well I'm afraid Jean thought about this twice and I think his decision cannot be
> changed easily. Personally I think that change of one person to another won't
> change much. Problem we are facing is long delay between the post of the driver
> to driver merge.
>
> Review of one complex driver takes hours and hours. If the fixes could be split
> into critical and non-critical parts driver could be accepted earlier and marked
> as EXPERIMENTAL in very new (for hwmon ;) meaning of the word. I mean Jean did
> great job and spotted all troubles during the review, so there were nearly none
> of bug fixes for already merged drivers.
>
> Maybe we could try following:
>
> 1) person post the driver
> 2) quick review could be done critical fixes only, driver goes to -mm
> 3) review that goes deeper - check for interface conformity and all the stuff
> which could break - fixes for non-critical stuff
> 4) after this driver goes to Linus tree at the very beginning for the merge
> cycle marked as EXPERIMENTAL
> 5) if the person agrees to be in MAINTAINER final review may be done and
> EXPERIMENTAL could be removed. (This is step which might involve all steps to
> make the driver really perfect ;)
>
> Well this is just an idea. Neither it does solve the maintainer problem, nor it
> is perfect solution.

I would be happy to help with quick reviews. I would not be able to do
the "final" "code-perfect" review. But I would be happy to contribute
(more) time for this review process if it would help Jean feel more
comfortable.

> As for the proposal of David. I joined the list in 2004 with my very own driver
> and learned a lot from Jean and others and on my own ;) During last year??? I
> was doing some kind of "review preprocessor" to help Jean with that. I still
> have feeling Jean is simply better. Second reason why I hesitating to say "I
> will take it" is time. This would cost a lot of time, but unfortunately my free
> time is very tight. I'm doing PhD and working for a embedded stuff company
> (SYSGO). Moreover I would like to meet some nice girl for a life, which is quite
> difficult and also quite time consumptive ;).

Ah, Rudolf, you and I are in almost exactly the same position. In every detail.

> Personally better would be go with Jean and some kind of scheme noted above,
> which would solve our "takes too long problem" and preserve the high quality of
> drivers. This would mean some co-maintainers to Jean, rather than to live
> without Jean at all.

I think our major problem here is that there will not be anyone
capable of Jean's work, and not for a while yet. I would have thought
you, Rudolf, were closest. The hwmon project really needs him.

David