Hi Segher, On Sun, Jun 15, 2025 at 11:07:15AM -0500, Segher Boessenkool wrote: > On Sun, Jun 15, 2025 at 05:52:50PM +0200, Mark Wielaard wrote: > > On Wed, Jun 11, 2025 at 10:40:02AM -0500, Segher Boessenkool wrote: > > > On Wed, Jun 04, 2025 at 05:53:18PM -0600, Jeff Law via Gcc wrote: > > > > If we make things simpler for those cases where it is actually simple > > > > and increase visibility so that folks know state I think it would be a > > > > welcome improvement to the process. > > > > > > Yup. And it might not be a bad plan to get some people who still are > > > active onto the GCC steering committee, as well! > > > > > > It is as important now as ever that there *is* such a thing as the SC: > > > all decisions need to be taken responsibiliity for by some final > > > authority, which we (as a project) have all decided to have that > > > authority. > > > > Agreed, having active developers taking responsibility is > > important. But it doesn't really have to be through a steering > > committee imho. > > I specifically said that there *is* a need for something like the SC. > There needs to be a final authority. Without that there will be > eternal (and eternally lasting) fights.
I agree with you we need some developers that are actually still active in the project to help make decisions and take responsibility. I just don't think that all needs to be done through an SC. I don't know why that would have to lead to fights. We have become pretty good at getting to consensus on things. > > We (as a project) can decide that the authority lies > > with the active maintainers as a whole getting to concensus. Just like > > any maintainer can appoint new write after approval accounts. Or, as > > WaA is decided by the sourceware maintainers. The request form says > "email address of person who approved request", but that is not who has > the final call :-) Which of course makes sense, the sourceware > maintainers primarily need to keep their system safe and working! That is not how it works. Technically of course sourceware overseers could just randomly add or remove accounts. But I don't remember any instance of that ever happening. They just follow the process outlined at https://gcc.gnu.org/gitwrite.html#authenticated checking the details and verifying the approver is allowed to approve. But they aren't just going to second guess the approver when everything is in order. > > in this case, the active maintainers of a subsystem decide on who else > > becomes a reviewer or maintainer for that subsystem. The release > > managers could decide if and when to accept a new front or > > backend. etc. > > That is not how things work. The SC decides who does and does not > become maintainer (reviewer is just a hobbled kind of maintainer, there > is no real difference). Maintainers for frontends, backends, subsystems > can recommend things, sure. But they have no separate authority, there > can not be fiefdoms. This is Good(tm). This case is Richard's proposal and I think it will lead to having more active maintainers and reviewers precisely because currently the SC is a bit stale and mostly not very active. IMHO the active maintainers know best here and we don't need the SC for these kind of decisions. Cheers, Mark
