[RFC] MAINTAINERS service, was: Re: alphabetic ordering of MAINTAINERS

[Krzysztof Halasa <khc@pm.waw.pl>]

Oliver Neukum <oliver@neukum.org> writes:

>> I wanted to add an entry to MAINTAINERS and while doing it I saw that in
>> the corresponding region the alphabetic ordering is broken.  Then I
>> inteded to fix that up for a trivial patch.  Next was to check the rest
>> of the file and there are so much misorderings that it's not sensible to
>> choose the trivial path anymore as there are currently 114 entries out
>> of order[1].
>
> What good does alphabetic ordering? You'll grep it anyway.

I was thinking about a mailing list / database service instead:
- source file/directory-based (e.g. someone could maintain whole
  drivers/, someone else drivers/char and others drivers/char/asdfg.[ch])
- people would be able to add themselves as "observers" using mail
  and/or HTML interface
- sending a patch would automatically trigger Cc: to all people
  registered as maintainers (or "observers") for the files modified
- full recipient list would be present in mail sent by the service, so
  the following discussion wouldn't need it anymore. It would be used
  only for posting patches.
- as such, I don't expect a need for spam filtering - messages
  containing no patch would be rejected in the SMTP session.

Pro: no more missing Cc:, no more manual lookups and guessing, you
     just Cc: the service, possibility for "observers".
Con: another thing to create and maintain, you don't immediately know
     who exactly has been sent a copy.

I think I could create a test service but after the test phase it
should probably go to some machine more reliable/able than mine.

Comments?
-- 
Krzysztof Halasa