linux-kernel - Re: [RFC patch] MAINTAINERS: encourage testers to volunteer

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Date:	Thu, 14 Sep 2006 23:20:57 +0159
From:	Jiri Slaby <jirislaby@...il.com>
To:	Adrian Bunk <bunk@...sta.de>
CC:	Jim Cromie <jim.cromie@...il.com>,
	Linux kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...l.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC patch] MAINTAINERS:  encourage testers to volunteer

Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 14, 2006 at 01:14:24PM -0600, Jim Cromie wrote:
>> Add a new entry-type into MAINTAINERS whereby folks with hardware can 
>> volunteer to
>> test patches to the driver.  It should encourage folks to put themselves 
>> "on the hook"
>> in trade for a little bit of notoriety.
>>
>> Hopefully this will help improve:
>> - support for rare hardware
>> - QA on that hardware
>> - connections between hackers & testers
>> - would-be hackers can find new things to do, esp in less visited parts 
>> of the dist.
>>
>> Additions should be approved by maintainers etc, but thats no different 
>> than is currently done.
> 
> There are currently 97 different saa7134 card types supported by the 
> kernel. Do we need an entry for each of them (each card type has it's 
> own specific support)?

It's utterly sufficient to know about only one person, who have that piece of 
hardware in most cases -- to test the core of the driver, not all specific 
parts. Something like to test it at least roughly.

> And this information will become outdated much faster than updated
> (even the maintainers entries are sometimes outdated).

When akpm proposed this, I agreed (but still have no contacts to post a patch), 
because I needed somebody to test a driver I had rewritten a little bit, but 
there was no place to take a look...
But his thoughts were a little bit different, he considered creating a separate 
file named TESTERS and there have a list of these "qa people" (even for one 
specific piece of hw if necessary). [I hope I did understand him correctly...]

>> --- doc-touches/MAINTAINERS~	2006-09-14 11:50:03.000000000 -0600
>> +++ doc-touches/MAINTAINERS	2006-09-14 12:19:13.000000000 -0600
>> @@ -80,6 +80,12 @@
>> 			it has been replaced by a better system and you
>> 			should be using that.
>>
>> +V: Validation/Test contact and hardware they can test.
>> +
>> +	Identifies folks who are willing to test driver patches, etc.
>> +	Also can identify lack of hardware for otherwize maintained drivers
>> +	by using 'none'
>> +
>> 3C359 NETWORK DRIVER
>> P:	Mike Phillips
>> M:	mikep@...uxtr.net

regards,
-- 
http://www.fi.muni.cz/~xslaby/            Jiri Slaby
faculty of informatics, masaryk university, brno, cz
e-mail: jirislaby gmail com, gpg pubkey fingerprint:
B674 9967 0407 CE62 ACC8  22A0 32CC 55C3 39D4 7A7E
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