Re: [PATCH v4 0/5] MFD/ASoC: Add support for Intel Bay Trail boards with WM5102 codec

From: Lee Jones <lee.jones@linaro.org>
To: Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>
Cc: Hans de Goede <hdegoede@redhat.com>,
	Cezary Rojewski <cezary.rojewski@intel.com>,
	Pierre-Louis Bossart <pierre-louis.bossart@linux.intel.com>,
	Liam Girdwood <liam.r.girdwood@linux.intel.com>,
	Jie Yang <yang.jie@linux.intel.com>,
	patches@opensource.cirrus.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	Andy Shevchenko <andy.shevchenko@gmail.com>,
	Charles Keepax <ckeepax@opensource.cirrus.com>,
	alsa-devel@alsa-project.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 0/5] MFD/ASoC: Add support for Intel Bay Trail boards with WM5102 codec
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2021 15:21:24 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20210204152124.GO2789116@dell> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20210204150904.GD4288@sirena.org.uk>

On Thu, 04 Feb 2021, Mark Brown wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 04, 2021 at 01:46:06PM +0000, Lee Jones wrote:
> > On Thu, 04 Feb 2021, Mark Brown wrote:
> 
> > > The usual pattern here is that the MFD patches get merged and then I
> > > pull a shared branch in for any dependencies - at this point the series
> > > is now on the backlog of serieses where I'm waiting for the MFD to sort
> > > itself out before I really look at it again.
> 
> > I tend to push patches awaiting Acks to the back of the queue.
> 
> > Stalemate.
> 
> I'm only going to ack things if I expect to see them applied via another
> tree, that's generally what an ack means from a maintainer.  Especially
> with ASoC where we keep on having subsystem wide changes quite often I'm
> not likely to do that for things like new drivers unless it's very clear
> what the timelines are.
> 
> It would be enormously helpful to get the bits of the core MFDs that
> create dependencies committed while the rest of the series is still in
> process, as well as allowing things to be applied it also helps with
> knowing if the dependencies are stable.

The default point-of-view is; if a patch was submitted as part of a
set, it's likely that it makes the most sense to merge it as a set.

Very often sets will have inter-dependencies (usually headers) which
would otherwise require the base patches to be applied (perhaps the
MFD core and the headers) in one release, followed by the accompanying
child device changes during a subsequent release.  This doesn't scale
well and puts the contributor in an unfair position.

This is how we usually work together.  Why is ASoC so different?

-- 
Lee Jones [李琼斯]
Senior Technical Lead - Developer Services
Linaro.org │ Open source software for Arm SoCs
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