On 08/10/2012 12:38 PM, Randy Dunlap wrote: > On 08/09/2012 02:48 PM, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote: > >> From: "Luis R. Rodriguez" <mcg...@do-not-panic.com> >> >> Initial large code submissions typically are not accepted >> on their first patch submission. The developers are >> typically given feedback and at times some developers may >> even submit changes to the original authors for integration >> into their second submission attempt.
Heh. I did a talk about this at Flourish 2010 in Chicago. (There's video, but the sound quality's so bad you'd go deaf trying to understand what I was saying.) The analogy I made was with a magazine editor, fighting off sturgeon's law in the slush pile, cherry-picking a few submissions to polish up and include in the next issue of the magazine. In this context, a personalized rejection letter to a new author is actually encouragement, and the editor's only authority is veto power with bounceback negotiation. "I won't accept this, but if you change it like so then maybe..." >> Developers wishing to contribute changes to the evolution >> of a second patch submission must supply their own Siged-off-by >> tag to the original authors and must submit their changes >> on a public mailing list or ensure that these submission >> are recorded somewhere publicly. Should != must. >> To date a few of these type of contributors have expressed >> different preferences for whether or not their own SOB tag >> should be used for a second code submission. Lets keep things >> simple and only require the contributor's SOB tag if so desired >> explicitly. It is not technically required if there already >> is a public record of their contribution somewhere. Heh. "technically required". As if there's a process separate from the people implementing it. Speaking of which, did anybody ever explicitly document the four level developer -> maintainer -> lieutenant -> architect thing, and how each level owes you a _response_? >> Document this on Documentation/SubmittingPatches >> >> Signed-off-by: Luis R. Rodriguez <mcg...@do-not-panic.com> > > > Note: I'm no longer maintaining Documentation/, so I'm cc-ing Rob. Got it. >> --- >> >> This v2 has Singed/Signed typo fixes. >> >> Documentation/SubmittingPatches | 15 +++++++++++++++ >> 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+) You realize this is a political document as much as technical, right? Making those longer and more specific is seldom a good idea. >> diff --git a/Documentation/SubmittingPatches >> b/Documentation/SubmittingPatches >> index c379a2a..3154565 100644 >> --- a/Documentation/SubmittingPatches >> +++ b/Documentation/SubmittingPatches >> @@ -366,6 +366,21 @@ and protect the submitter from complaints. Note that >> under no circumstances >> can you change the author's identity (the From header), as it is the one >> which appears in the changelog. >> >> +If you are submitting a large change (for example a new driver) at times >> +you may be asked to make quite a lot of modifications prior to getting >> +your change accepted. At times you may even receive patches from developers >> +who not only wish to tell you what you should change to get your changes >> +upstream but actually send you patches. If those patches were made publicly >> +and they do contain a Signed-off-by tag you are not expected to provide > > I would add a comma: tag, > > but for a patch that attempts to clarify, I don't find it very helpful. > >> +their own Signed-off-by tag on the second iteration of the patch so long >> +as there is a public record somewhere that can be used to show the >> +contributor had sent their changes with their own Signed-off-by tag. Are you expecting another SCO, or is this just the standard bueaucratic "once a procedure is in place we must continue to elaborate it until it describes approved methods of breathing"? The signed-off-by was a way of saying "I claim to be authorized to submit this code, so if you find out later it's plaguraized you can blame me". Having someone to blame makes lawyers happy, and we were being sued by a troll at the time. As long as the mechanism's there, additional whatevered-by lines provide an easy "who do I cc if I bisect a bug to this patch and want answers". It also provides an email address for the original author if they weren't using git. Getting your thingied-by: on there can also be a way of saying "I use this darn feature and want to see the patch go in already, sheesh" but the politics are actually more complicated than that. (The big questions Linus wants an answer to are "is doing this a good idea in the first place", "is this the best way to do it", and "will this thing be _maintained_ if an unrelated change breaks it five years from now". Interest from unrelated third parties doesn't necessarily answer any of those questions.) >> +If you receive patches privately during development you may want to >> +ask for these patches to be re-posted publicly or you can also decide >> +to merge the patches as part of a separate historical git tree that >> +will remain online for historical archiving. > > I don't think it's a good idea to require a historical git archive for > (private) patches. I think it's actively detrimental to try to require that. For a patch that was developed privately in-house at at some large corporation and had to go through the legal clearance dance of "Let's pretend that Qualcomm Innovation Center is a different entity than Qualcomm, and while you're at it let's pretend the Code Aurora Foundation is more than a partnership between Qualcomm and Qualcomm with Intel's name stamped on it to act as a condom over our sock puppet to keep the Icky GPL from affecting our patent licensing revenue"... And you then ask for the full development history of that patch? Not likely. Sometimes the only way the poor engineers can get serious external review of that sort of stuff before submitting a frozen copy to a legal gauntlet is to hire a consultant and have them review it under NDA. It's useful to encourage people to release early/often when they can, so we can critque their design before they've put a lot of effort into going down the wrong path (ala OpenVZ spending a dozen years getting containers to work right in a persistent out-of-tree fork and then having Linus veto the buckets-of-new-syscalls API so they had to chip each bit off and port it to a new API to get containers upstream). That winds up saving people real work in the long run. But implying "submitting working code and giving us your word can be used under GPLv2" is not enough? Not so much. > If I send a patch privately and it contains an SOB: > line, then the maintainer should be able to apply the patch and > use the SOB: from the patch (IMO). Are you addressing some concern > about fraudulent emails/patches? > >> + >> Special note to back-porters: It seems to be a common and useful practise >> to insert an indication of the origin of a patch at the top of the commit >> message (just after the subject line) to facilitate tracking. For instance, The purpose of signed-off-by is to let people figure out where code came from and why. If you don't do that the reviewers will ding you. I'd rather communicate that than the rest of this message combined. Rob -- GNU/Linux isn't: Linux=GPLv2, GNU=GPLv3+, they can't share code. Either it's "mere aggregation", or a license violation. 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