Re: [PATCH 0/10] MAINTAINERS - add script, patterns and misc updates

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Fri, 17 Apr 2009, Andrew Morton wrote:
> 
> : fatal: Not a git repository
> 
>     it whines about not being run in a git directory, but does a decent
>     job anyway.  

The default options are: --email --git --m --l --multiline, and the 
"--git" part basically does a

	git log --since=${email_git_since} -- ${file}

to see the logs, and greps and counts sign-offs.

So the "fatal: Not a git repository" is from git saying it can't do that.

And as a result, it _only_ looks at your MAINTAINERS file, rather than 
trying to figure it out from other sources too.

For example:

	[torvalds@nehalem linux]$ ./scripts/get_maintainer.pl --no-git -f kernel/exit.c
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org

would be what you see. And then if you have git, you'd also see

	[torvalds@nehalem linux]$ ./scripts/get_maintainer.pl --git -f kernel/exit.c
	Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
	Oleg Nesterov <oleg@tv-sign.ru>
	Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
	Roland McGrath <roland@redhat.com>

because it literally looked at sign-offs of patches that touched 
kernel/exit.c in the last year, and noticed that those tive people had the 
top five spots.

(Ok, so I have the top spot, but I'm a penguin chief and as such get 
excused. You were _originally_ on that list too, but apparently you like 
getting email, so now you're listed too).

And yeah, I personally find the git statistics more relevant than the 
MAINTAINERS list. I just tend to do it by hand, although I tend to use a 
six-month cutoff:

	git log --since=6.months.ago kernel/exit.c |
		grep 'Signed-off-by: ' |
		sort | uniq -c | sort -n

works beautifully on just about any set of files and doesn't need no 
steenking perl.

		Linus