Re: [RFC] automatic CC generation for patch submission

On Sat, Jun 30, 2007 at 12:47:11PM +0300, Dan Aloni wrote:
On Sat, Jun 30, 2007 at 06:01:23AM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
On Sat, Jun 30, 2007 at 05:34:51AM +0300, Dan Aloni wrote:
...
Basically, instead of manually figuring out who to add to CC
when sending a patch to LKML by looking at MAINTAINERS, a
script can look at '.maintainers' files spread across the
source tree and automatically generate a proper list of CCs
for a patch.
...
To illustrate: If a patch affects a file under
drivers/net/e1000, the CC script will look at these files

drivers/net/e1000/.maintainers
drivers/net/.maintainers
drivers/.maintainers
.maintainers

... to gather up the mailing list addresses or an individual
maintainer inbox address.
...
Any comments?

As Auke said, maintaining the information in MAINTAINERS would be
better.

Yes, I tend to agree.

And another important use case that shouldn't require much extra work
would be to do the same for bug reports.

Yes, however for bug reports it isn't always possible to tell which
subsystem or files would get fixed once the bug is understood.
Perhaps it would be good once the bug report reaches the stage where
patches are made.

Don't aim for perfection.

If your program also accepts a path or file as input (instead of
extracting it from a patch) you'll get it with nearly zero extra effort.

Generally, you should keep in mind that it must fit into the workflow of
the people who should use it. E.g. I could imagine that it might make
more sense if you write a small tool that takes a patch or a path and
outputs email addresses instead of a huge tool that tries to solve too
many problems at once and doesn't fit into the workflow of most people.

I absolutely agree - in fact I was thinking of this as a nice
addition to scripts/checkpatch.pl. For example:

Your patch has no obvious style problems and is ready for submission.
When submitting this particular patch, you should CC to:

e1000-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, netdev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

checkpatch.pl checks a patch, not an email.

And e.g. in my workflow there isn't any technical correlation between
some "Cc:" field in a patch and the recipients of the email containing
it since I'm not using any fancy scripts for maintaining and sending
patches.

However my Perl hacking capabilities (or incapabilities thereof)
wouldn't do good to that script I suppose.

A tool that simply would output some email addresses to Cc when given a
patch is something I would most likely use since it would fit in my
workflow and replace manual looks at MAINTAINERS.

Something big is less likely to be adapted unless it nearly perfectly
suits the needs of the people intended to use it.

But it's your program, so it's your choice what you implement and in
what language you implement it.

Dan Aloni

cu
Adrian

--

"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Relevant Pages

  • Re: [RFC] automatic CC generation for patch submission
    ... when sending a patch to LKML by looking at MAINTAINERS, ... script can look at '.maintainers' files spread across the ... for a patch. ... would be to do the same for bug reports. ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: [PATCH 54/56] x86: Remove void casts
    ... a "who maintains what" kind of script - and share that script ... with lkml. ... mailing-list addresses from MAINTAINERS for example. ... could you just do it for a few cases and send an RFC patch ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: [patch] Add the device IDs for AMD/ATI SB700
    ... Since Jeff covered both status of your patches and administrative issues ... It makes sense to put addition of _all_ new PCI IDs into the first patch ... and without maintainers worrying about your patches not applying cleanly. ... When you don't see a patch in the upstream git tree ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • =?utf-7?B?UkU6ICtBRnMtcGF0Y2grQUYwLSBBZGQgdGhlIGRldmljZSBJRHMgZg==?= =?utf-7?B?b3IgQU1EL0FUS
    ... Since Jeff covered both status of your patches and administrative issues ... and without maintainers worrying about your patches not applying cleanly. ... When you don't see a patch in the upstream git tree ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: [RFC] automatic CC generation for patch submission
    ... when sending a patch to LKML by looking at MAINTAINERS, ... script can look at '.maintainers' files spread across the ... for a patch. ... There had been need of rain for many days. ...
    (Linux-Kernel)