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* [U-Boot-Users] Changes to U-Boot Development Process
@ 2007-01-17 21:24 Wolfgang Denk
  2007-01-18  0:36 ` Scott McNutt
                   ` (9 more replies)
  0 siblings, 10 replies; 65+ messages in thread
From: Wolfgang Denk @ 2007-01-17 21:24 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: u-boot

Hello,

many of you know  all  too  well  that  we  have  problems  with  the
development  process  of U-Boot. The biggest problem is that it takes
much too long until new contributed code  finds  it's  way  into  the
public source code repository.

Switching from CVS to git helped a lot on the technical side. It  was
especially  important  as  it also opened the door for organizational
changes, which are urgently needed.

We've been discussion these issues for some time,  and  here  is  our
joint proposal. "We", that is mostly Detlev Zundel, Stefan Roese, and
me  (Wolfgang  Denk).  Of  course  we  also had input form many other
sources.


As this mail will propose quite a fundamental change for  the  U-Boot
project, please allow us to introduce it with a few short reflections
on the current state of affairs.

Being a regular reader of this list you will be well aware that  even
with  all the problems in the development process and some ugly areas
in the U-Boot code (like the #ifdef mazes)  there  is  one  important
feature:  that's  the  quality  of  the  U-Boot  code  base  -  being
highlighted quite well by the literal absence of temporary  breakages
in  the  development  code base. This alone allows for the well known
"use the latest code from the repository" answer when someone  enters
the  grounds  of this project for the first time. It is well worth to
reflect on this quality for a little while.

Having done that we may well ask where this quality  comes  from?  We
think  that anybody reading this list only for a limited time will be
able to come up with the answer, namely  the  continuous  maintenance
effort  of  Wolfgang  and  his modus operandi of personally reviewing
nearly each and every contribution in this multi-architecture project
supporting hundreds of boards. It should  be  obvious  how  important
such  a  level  of  code  review  is to keep U-Boot from falling into
disconnected pieces - just think of the effort  to  keep  aspects  of
U-Boot similar across all supported architectures.

But of course even Wolfgang only  has  24  hours  per  day,  and  the
positive  effect  of this maintenance mode has shrunk continuously in
comparison to the downside  of  the  embarassingly  long  backlog  of
patches  posted  on  this  mailing  list  waiting  to  be  processed,
rendering new lines of development very difficult to say the least.

So the time is more than ripe to change this while explicitely trying
to keep the quality of the  project  on  the  high  grounds  that  we
brazenly claim for it :)

Gladly there are other projects in the F/OSS community that are worth
taking a peek at to snatch a hint or two on how we  can  tackle  this
task.

Considering all this we propose a change in  maintaining  the  U-Boot
code base to a model similar to what is currently being done with the
Linux  kernel,  namely  we  would  like  to  establish a community of
"custodian"  maintainers,  responsible   for   certain   sub-systems,
aspects, architectures, or board families of the U-Boot source tree.

We would like to follow the Linux precedent by assembling a  list  of
people  willing  to  invest  time  and  effort into this; the already
existing MAINTAINERS file will serve  a  new  function  to  list  the
individual  custodians with their corresponding area of responsibilty
and contact information.

Each custodian will have to administrate  his  or  her  git  tree  to
streamline transparent development and integration (pulling) into the
"official"  U-Boot repository. If the need should arise (for example,
if a custodian doesn't have convenient means  to  host  it  himself),
DENX will of course be glad to host such trees.

The stated goal of this change of course is to spread the  burden  of
maintaining U-Boot to more shoulders so we can hopefully dramatically
cut  down  on  the  current lag between a patch being proposed on the
mailing list and being processed - be that  accepting,  rejecting  or
openly discussing it with the community.

As you must have realized by now, this cannot  be  done  without  the
community  participating,  so  what  do  you  think of this idea? Any
comments or suggestions?


Of course we should be honest right  upfront  and  state  that  as  a
custodian  you  would  be  fully  responsible  for "your" part of the
U-Boot source tree and it is unfortunately necessary,  that  you  are
able to commit to a certain amount of time and willingness to discuss
topics on the mailing list for this maintenance.

Do we have an immediate line of volunteers raising in the first row?

Skimming through the archives we came up with a list of people  which
the  U-Boot  project  already  is indebted to and probably being good
candidates for custodians. Of course this list cannot  and  does  not
want  to  be  a  "credits"  list  of  all  the valuable people having
contributed, so please don't attribute anything else to it as being a
starting point for this new maintenance mode. Also there are multiple
suggestions where ultimately of course we would like the community to
decide.

So with all these precautions in place, here we go:

ARM architecture	Richard Woodruff, Peter Pearse
AVR32 architecture	Haavard Skinnemoen
Blackfin architecture	Aubrey Li
Intel IXP architecture	Stefan Roese
ColdFire architecture	Stefan Roese
Microblaze architecture	Michal Simek
MIPS architecture	Rodolfo Giometti, Andrew Dyer
MPC83xx architecture	Kim Phillips
MPC85xx architecture	Jon Loelinger
MPC86xx architecture	Jon Loelinger
MPC8xx architecture	Wolfgang Denk
NIOS(2)			Scott McNutt
PPC4xx architecture	Stefan Roese

CFI FLASH driver	Tolunay Orkun
NAND FLASH subsystem	Ladislav Michl, Stefan Roese
USB drivers		Markus Klotzb?cher

So thanks for bearing with  us  through  this  longwinded  mail  that
hopefully starts to pave the way to a new level of quality and extent
of  the  U-Boot project that is only possibly through its very active
community - you!


Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk, Stefan Roese, Detlev Zundel

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 65+ messages in thread
* [U-Boot-Users] Changes to U-Boot Development Process
@ 2007-02-01 11:31 Peter.Pearse
  2007-02-01 15:37 ` Grant Likely
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 65+ messages in thread
From: Peter.Pearse @ 2007-02-01 11:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: u-boot

Am I on the right lines here?

U-Boot development process
==========================
Gatekeepers have responsibility for some area of U-Boot.

A developer submits a patch via email or requests git pull
[Gatekeepers possibly contend for patch]
Chosen gatekeeper inspects patch for
	Coding style
	Basic logic
	U-Boot ethos (e.g lowest possible size) **1
	MAKEALL **2 
until satisfied
[If not rejected]
Gatekeeper pushes new branch for the patch to the "area git",
and notifies the user list.
As well as a short summary the description may include
	Affected board or area
	Suggested tests
If unable to test sufficiently themselves **2, the gatekeeper request tests 
from specific maintainers and U-Boot users. 
Tests by the original developer are not sufficient.
Once tests are passed, or some agreed time limit expires **3, 
the gatekeeper requests that the area branch be merged into the main tree.
[If necessary, patch is reworked to allow merge] 
	
**1:: Ethos - whereas this used to be in Wolfgang's head we may need to
document some of it.	
**2:: Gatekeepers may not have access to all necessary tools and/or boards
**3:: I think patches should be accepted if no-one (other than the original
developer) 
has tested them within a certain time, but they meet all other criteria.
 

Regards

Peter Pearse

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 65+ messages in thread
* [U-Boot-Users] Changes to U-Boot Development Process
@ 2007-02-08  0:52 Wolfgang Denk
  2007-02-08 15:12 ` Rodolfo Giometti
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 65+ messages in thread
From: Wolfgang Denk @ 2007-02-08  0:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: u-boot

Hello,

it is more than time for a summary of the reactions to  our  proposal
to  split the U-Boot development into several subsystems and to share
the responsibility for these in a  group  of  "custodians".  Here  it
comes:

1) The reaction was all positive. So we will take the next steps in
   that direction.

2) There was a general agreement that it would be beneficial to  have
   all  the  custodian's  (public)  repositories  located on the same
   server, so we willdo that. If nobody objects, we will host this on
   www.denx.de

   We intend to name these repositories after their function (rather,
   for example, after the name of the custodian), so we don't have to
   modify  anything  in  case  there  should  be  a  change  of   the
   custodians.

3) It was no problem to find custodians for all suggested areas.
   Thanks a lot to all of you who volunteered!


You can find an overview about the current situation at
http://www.denx.de/wiki/UBoot/Custodians

This also includes the suggested names for the git repositories.
Please feel free to comment.


To avoid conflicts, I would like to establish a strict match  between
a  repository and a custodian, i. e. each of the git repositories can
be pushed into by exactly one custodian. As you can see,  we  already
have  mostly such matches, only for MIPS we have three instead of one
volunteer.

It's really great to receive so much voluntary help, but in  the  end
we  can  have  only  one  custodian  for  MIPS. However, for me it is
impossible to decide who to chose of Robert, Rodolfo or Hans. Can you
please try to sort this out among the three of you,  eventually  with
feedback from the list?


Custodians: can each of you please send me your public SSH  keys?  We
will  then  set up the git repositories so we can get the whole thing
rocking ASAP... [If you don't want to send it by e-mail, you can also
use jabber: wd at jabber.denx.de].

Thanks in advance,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
DENX Software Engineering GmbH, HRB 165235 Munich, CEO: Wolfgang Denk
Office:  Kirchenstr. 5,       D-82194 Groebenzell,            Germany
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd at denx.de
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
                                                   -- Albert Einstein

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 65+ messages in thread
* [U-Boot-Users] Changes to U-Boot Development Process
@ 2007-02-12  9:47 Peter Pearse
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 65+ messages in thread
From: Peter Pearse @ 2007-02-12  9:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: u-boot

Dear All

Anyone volunteering to help test ARM based boards is welcome to add
their details on

http://www.linux-arm.org/LinuxBootLoader/ARMTester

No commitment - when I have a patch for your board I'll notify you, 
you can accept/decline the individual patch.....

Regards

Peter

-- 
IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium.  Thank you.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 65+ messages in thread
* [U-Boot-Users] Changes to U-Boot Development Process
@ 2007-03-05 23:09 Wolfgang Denk
  2007-03-06  6:46 ` Aubrey Li
                   ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 65+ messages in thread
From: Wolfgang Denk @ 2007-03-05 23:09 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: u-boot

Hello,

I would like to get the custodian system finally up and running.

All the  custodian's  (public)  repositories  have  been  set  up  on
www.denx.de and are ready for use.

You can find an overview about the current situation at
	http://www.denx.de/wiki/UBoot/Custodians
plus some usage instructions at
	http://www.denx.de/wiki/UBoot/CustodianGitTrees


As mentioned before, I would like to establish a strict match between
a repository and a custodian, i. e. each of the git repositories  can
be pushed into by exactly one custodian. This is already the case for
all repositories except for the MIPS repo.

For MIPS, we have 3 volunteers. I wrote before:

> It's really great to receive so much voluntary help, but in  the  end
> we  can  have  only  one  custodian  for  MIPS. However, for me it is
> impossible to decide who to chose of Robert, Rodolfo or Hans. Can you
> please try to sort this out among the three of you,  eventually  with
> feedback from the list?

I have received zero responses about this so far. Robert, Rodolfo and
Hans - please comment.

Custodians: those of you who already sent me their SSH keys should be
able to start using their respective repositories immediately.

All the others (i. e. Peter Pearse, Tolunay Orkun, Rafal  Jaworowski,
the  MIPS  custodian,  Andy Fleming, Jon Loelinger, Scott McNutt, and
Markus Klotzb?cher): can each of you please send me your  public  SSH
keys?  [If  you  don't  want  to  send it by e-mail, you can also use
jabber: wd at jabber.denx.de].

Thanks in advance,

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
DENX Software Engineering GmbH, HRB 165235 Munich, CEO: Wolfgang Denk
Office:  Kirchenstr. 5,       D-82194 Groebenzell,            Germany
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd at denx.de
As far as the laws of mathematics refer  to  reality,  they  are  not
certain;  and  as  far  as  they  are  certain,  they do not refer to
reality.                                           -- Albert Einstein

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 65+ messages in thread
[parent not found: <20070306103035.GE6726@gundam.enneenne.com>]
[parent not found: <006d01c75fca$03b87040$0f4565d5@atmel.com>]

end of thread, other threads:[~2007-03-06 16:29 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 65+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2007-01-17 21:24 [U-Boot-Users] Changes to U-Boot Development Process Wolfgang Denk
2007-01-18  0:36 ` Scott McNutt
2007-01-18 11:18 ` Rodolfo Giometti
2007-01-18 14:46 ` Jerry Van Baren
2007-01-18 14:51   ` Josh Boyer
2007-01-18 16:25     ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-01-18 16:23   ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-01-18 17:40     ` Kim Phillips
2007-01-18 21:10       ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-01-18 21:20         ` Timur Tabi
2007-01-18 21:40           ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-01-19  7:17             ` Stefan Roese
2007-01-19  7:37               ` Grant Likely
2007-01-19 10:08                 ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-01-19 14:35                   ` Grant Likely
2007-01-19 14:58                   ` Timur Tabi
2007-01-19 10:05               ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-01-19 10:19                 ` Stefan Roese
2007-01-19 15:05                   ` Timur Tabi
2007-01-19 12:03                 ` Josh Boyer
2007-01-19 16:18                   ` Haavard Skinnemoen
2007-01-18 18:50   ` Rodolfo Giometti
2007-01-18 21:12     ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-01-19 10:23 ` Tolunay Orkun
2007-01-19 16:03 ` Haavard Skinnemoen
2007-01-19 16:21   ` Jerry Van Baren
2007-01-20 21:33 ` Michal Simek
2007-01-21 20:24 ` Guennadi Liakhovetski
2007-01-21 20:39   ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-01-21 20:49     ` Guennadi Liakhovetski
2007-01-22  9:23     ` Sam Song
2007-01-22 22:04       ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-01-26  4:22 ` Aubrey Li
2007-01-26  9:54   ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-01-26  8:31 ` Aubrey Li
2007-01-26  9:54   ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-01-26 13:38     ` Jerry Van Baren
2007-01-26 15:52     ` Aubrey Li
2007-01-26 16:06       ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-01-26  8:49 ` Grant Likely
2007-01-26 11:46   ` Josh Boyer
2007-01-26 14:36   ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-02-01 11:31 Peter.Pearse
2007-02-01 15:37 ` Grant Likely
2007-02-08  0:52 Wolfgang Denk
2007-02-08 15:12 ` Rodolfo Giometti
2007-02-12  9:47 Peter Pearse
2007-03-05 23:09 Wolfgang Denk
2007-03-06  6:46 ` Aubrey Li
2007-03-06  9:19   ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-03-06  9:29     ` Aubrey Li
2007-03-06 10:47       ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-03-06 10:52         ` Aubrey Li
2007-03-06  7:57 ` Rodolfo Giometti
2007-03-06 10:08   ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-03-06 10:28     ` Rodolfo Giometti
2007-03-06 15:42 ` Jon Loeliger
2007-03-06 15:59   ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-03-06 16:05     ` Jon Loeliger
2007-03-06 16:11       ` Jerry Van Baren
2007-03-06 16:29         ` Wolfgang Denk
2007-03-06 16:27       ` Wolfgang Denk
     [not found] <20070306103035.GE6726@gundam.enneenne.com>
2007-03-06 12:47 ` Wolfgang Denk
     [not found] <006d01c75fca$03b87040$0f4565d5@atmel.com>
2007-03-06 14:12 ` Peter Pearse
2007-03-06 14:49   ` Wolfgang Denk

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