Clarify the meaning of nested maintainership.
Signed-off-by: George Dunlap <george.dun...@citrix.com>
---
We had a discussion about the meaning of nested maintainership at the
recent Xen Hackathon. The notes of that meeting can be found on this
list [1]. No decision is official until discussed on this list, so
consider this patch the official proposal for this change, and object
or ask for clarification accordingly.
[1] marc.info/?i=<edb48431-c3ef-4461-b2d2-3ab95ea6c...@gmail.com>
CC: Ian Jackson <ian.jack...@eu.citrix.com>
CC: Jan Beulich <jbeul...@suse.com>
CC: Keir Fraser <k...@xen.org>
CC: Tim Deegan <t...@xen.org>
CC: Wei Liu <wei.l...@citrix.com>
CC: Konrad Wilk <konrad.w...@oracle.com>
CC: Andrew Cooper <andrew.coop...@citrix.com>
CC: Lars Kurth <lars.ku...@citrix.com>
---
MAINTAINERS | 34 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 34 insertions(+)
diff --git a/MAINTAINERS b/MAINTAINERS
index a34685d..be901d5 100644
--- a/MAINTAINERS
+++ b/MAINTAINERS
@@ -94,6 +94,40 @@ Descriptions of section entries:
printk, pr_info or pr_err
One regex pattern per line. Multiple K: lines acceptable.
+
+The meaning of nesting:
+
+Many maintanership areas are "nested": for example, there are entries
+for xen/arch/x86 as well as xen/arch/x86/mm, and even
+xen/arch/x86/mm/shadow; and there is a section at the end called "THE
+REST" which lists all committers, as well as a few more. The meaning
+of nesting is that:
+
+1. Under normal circumstances, the Ack of the most specific maintaner
+is both necessary and sufficient to get a change to a given file
+committed. So a change to xen/arch/x86/mm/shadow/multi.c requires the
+the Ack of the xen/arch/x86/mm/shadow maintainer for that part of the
+patch, but would not require the Ack of the xen/arch/x86 maintainer or
+the xen/arch/x86/mm maintainer.
+
+(A patch of course needs acks from the maintainers of each file that
+it changes; so a patch which changes xen/arch/x86/traps.c,
+xen/arch/x86/mm/p2m.c, and xen/arch/x86/mm/multi.c would require an
+Ack from each of the three sets of maintainers.)
+
+2. In unusual circumstances, a more general maintainer's Ack can stand
+in for or even overrule a specific maintainer's Ack. Unusual
+circumstances might include:
+ - The patch is fixing a high-priority issue causing immediate pain,
+ and the more specific maintainer is not available.
+ - The more specific maintainer has not responded either to the
+ original patch, nor to "pings", within a reasonable amount of time.
+ - The more general maintainer wants to overrule the more specific
+ maintainer on some issue. (This should be exceptional.)
+ - In the case of a disagreement between maintainers, THE REST can
+ vote to settle the matter. (This should be very exceptional indeed.)
+
+
Maintainers List (try to look for most precise areas first)
-----------------------------------
--
2.1.4
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