Re: [PATCH 1/2] ACPI/AEST: Initial AEST driver

[Marc Zyngier <maz@kernel.org>]

Hi Darren,

On Mon, 29 Nov 2021 20:39:23 +0000,
Darren Hart <darren@os.amperecomputing.com> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 06:09:14PM +0000, Marc Zyngier wrote:
> > On Wed, 24 Nov 2021 17:07:07 +0000,
> > >
> > > diff --git a/MAINTAINERS b/MAINTAINERS
> > > index 5250298d2817..aa0483726606 100644
> > > --- a/MAINTAINERS
> > > +++ b/MAINTAINERS
> > > @@ -382,6 +382,7 @@ ACPI FOR ARM64 (ACPI/arm64)
> > >  M:	Lorenzo Pieralisi <lorenzo.pieralisi@arm.com>
> > >  M:	Hanjun Guo <guohanjun@huawei.com>
> > >  M:	Sudeep Holla <sudeep.holla@arm.com>
> > > +R:	Tyler Baicar <baicar@os.amperecomputing.com>
> > >  L:	linux-acpi@vger.kernel.org
> > >  L:	linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org (moderated for non-subscribers)
> > >  S:	Maintained
> > 
> > Isn't this a bit premature? This isn't even mentioned in the commit
> > message, only in passing in the cover letter.
> > 
> 
> Hi Marc,
> 
> This was something I encouraged Tyler to add during internal review,
> both in response to the checkpatch.pl warning about adding new drivers
> as well as our interest in reviewing any future changes to the aest
> driver. Since refactoring is common, this level made sense to me - but
> would it be preferable to add a new entry for just the new driver Tyler
> added?

Adding someone as the co-maintainer/co-reviewer of a whole subsystem
(ACPI/arm64 in this case) comes, IMO, with a number of pre-requisites:
has the proposed co-{maintainer,reviewer} contributed and/or reviewed
a significant number of patches to that subsystem and/or actively
participated in the public discussions on the design and the
maintenance of the subsystem, so that their reviewing is authoritative
enough? I won't be judge of this, but it is definitely something to
consider.

I don't think preemptively adding someone to the MAINTAINERS entry to
indicate an interest in a whole subsystem is the right way to do it.
One could argue that this is what a mailing list is for! ;-) On the
other hand, an active participation to the review process is the
perfect way to engage with fellow developers and to grow a profile. It
is at this stage that adding oneself as an upstream reviewer makes a
lot of sense.

Alternatively, adding a MAINTAINERS entry for a specific driver is
definitely helpful and will certainly result in the listed maintainer
to be Cc'd on changes affecting it. But I would really like this
maintainer to actively engage with upstream, rather than simply be on
the receiving end of a stream of changes.

Thanks,

	M.

-- 
Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.