linux-kernel - Re: wireless-drivers: random cleanup patches piling up

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Date:	Tue, 26 Jan 2016 10:58:23 +0530
From:	Sudip Mukherjee <sudipm.mukherjee@...il.com>
To:	Kalle Valo <kvalo@...eaurora.org>
Cc:	"John W. Linville" <linville@...driver.com>,
	Joe Perches <joe@...ches.com>, linux-wireless@...r.kernel.org,
	kbuild test robot <lkp@...el.com>,
	kernel-janitors <kernel-janitors@...r.kernel.org>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: wireless-drivers: random cleanup patches piling up

On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 05:54:12PM +0200, Kalle Valo wrote:
> "John W. Linville" <linville@...driver.com> writes:
> 
> > On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 02:21:20PM +0200, Kalle Valo wrote:
> >> Joe Perches <joe@...ches.com> writes:
> >> 
> >> > On Thu, 2016-01-21 at 16:58 +0200, Kalle Valo wrote:
> >> >> Hi,
> >> >> 
> >> >> I have quite a lot of random cleanup patches from new developers waiting
> >> >> in my queue:
> >> >> 
> >> >> https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-wireless/list/?state=10&delegate=25621&order=date
> >> >> 
> >> >> (Not all of them are cleanup patches, there are also few patches
> >> >> deferred due to other reasons, but you get the idea.)
> >> >> 
> >> >> These cleanup patches usually take quite a lot of my time and I'm
> >> >> starting to doubt the benefit, compared to the time needed to dig
> >> >> through them and figuring out what to apply. And this is of course time
> >> >> away from other patches, so it's slowing down "real" development.
> >> >> 
> >> >> I really don't know what to do. Part of me is saying that I just should
> >> >> drop them unless it's reviewed by a more experienced developer but on
> >> >> the other hand this is a good way get new developers onboard.
> >> >> 
> >> >> What others think? Are these kind of patches useful?
> >> >
> >> > Some yes, mostly not really.
> >> >
> >> > While whitespace style patches have some small value,
> >> > very few of the new contributors that use tools like
> >> > "scripts/checkpatch.pl -f" on various kernel files 
> >> > actually continue on to submit actual defect fixing
> >> > or optimization or code clarity patches.
> >> 
> >> That's also my experience from maintaining wireless-drivers for a year,
> >> this seems to be a "hit and run" type of phenomenon.
> >
> > Should we be looking for someone to run a "wireless-driver-cleanups"
> > tree?  They could handle the cleanups and trivial stuff, and send
> > you a pull request a couple of times per release...?
> 
> Not a bad idea! But I don't think we need a separate tree as applying
> patches from patchwork is easy. It should be doable that we add an
> account to patchwork and whenever I see a this type of trivial cleanup
> patch I'll assign it to the cleanup maintainer and whenever he/she
> thinks it's ready he assigns the patch back to me and I'll apply it.
> 
> The only difficult part is finding a victim/volunteer to
> do that ;)

I can be a volunteer (victim?). Though i donot know much about
wireless-drivers, but I do know a little about cleanup patches.
And maybe, in the process I will start knowing wireless-drivers.

regards
sudip