Basile STARYNKEVITCH wrote: > Andrew Haley wrote: >> Basile STARYNKEVITCH wrote: >>> >>> Perhaps could be discussed at the summit some way to increase the set of >>> reviewers, i.e. the set of people able to say Ok to a patch submitted on >>> gcc-patches@ >> >> As I understand it, the set of reviewers allowed to say OK to a >> patch is limited to the set of people capable of reviewing these >> patches. That is, there is a limited set of people with enough >> real knowledge of gcc to approve a patch.
> I know a lot of people who fully understand many of the patches I > did submit, and who are not able to say Ok (because' their plain > maintainer status disallows that). > And there are some patches which I did comment about, which I > believe I did understand, and of course which I am not allowed to > approve. I am certainly not alone in that case! Well, maybe. But it's not what you know, it's what you know that ain't so. And I am pretty sure that I'm more cautious today about some of the patches I believe I understand than I was when I started many years go. > My feeling is on the contrary that the set of people having a real > knowledge of gcc (or at least of substantial parts of it [*]) is much > bigger than the set of reviewers allowed to say OK. That's certainly true, but there's a big difference between having real knowledge of gcc and having enough real knowledge to approve a patch. It is quite possibly the case that some maintainers should be "promoted". But it isn't sufficient to have a blanket policy of "let's have more reviewers". We need something more like "I think Fred Bloggs knows gcc well enough to approve patches to reload" or "I am Fred Bloggs and I know gcc well enough to approve patches to reload." That would be much more productive. Andrew.
