Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] Recruitment (Reviewers, Testers, Maintainers, Hobbyists)

[Darren Hart <dvhart@infradead.org>]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 11:44:09AM -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Jul 2015 12:37:18 -0700
> Darren Hart <dvhart@infradead.org> wrote:
> 
> > I've come to believe that this is one of many side effects of our dependency on
> > a completely free form mechanism for the management of our patches, a mechanism
> > which is becoming harder and harder to setup "correctly" with modern tooling
> > (since the industry is killing "real email").
> > 
> > I spend a highly disproportionate amount of my time, relative to measurable
> > quality impact to the kernel, going over the nuances of submitting patches.
> > 
> > 1) Must have a complete commit message
> > 2) DCO goes above the ---
> > 3) Include a patch changelog, do so below ---
> > 4) Cc maintainers :-)
> > 5) Checkpatch... checkpatch... checkpatch...
> 
> Ug, don't emphasize checkpatch. I see people making patches uglier due
> to it. I have an old version of checkpatch that I sometimes run, but
> the new version, IMHO, has more noise than signal.
> 
> > 6) Compiler warnings
> > 7) CodingStyle :-)
> > 8) Use ascii or utf8 character encodings
> > 
> 
> 
> > Looking forward a bit, I would love to see some tooling in place for people to
> > submit patches either via a web form (which eliminates all the email tooling for
> > submitting patches - which is where the formatting is especially critical) or
> > through one of the more managed git systems, like gerrit, etc.
> 
> You mean like a web page that has a bunch of entries (like submitting a
> paper to a LF conference), and you need to fill out.
> 
> Subject:  
> 
>  Fill out a one line top of this patch
> 
> Problem or enhancement :
> 
>  Why did you write this patch? Was there a problem you discovered, or
>  is this a new feature you want to add.
> 
> Why this patch is needed:
> 
>  Why is this patch needed. If you fixed the problem, describe what you
>  did and why you did it this way. If it is a feature, explain why this
>  feature is needed, use cases for this feature, and how to use this new
>  feature. If this adds a new user space interface, make sure you
>  provide a man page (separate)
> 
> Patch file to upload:
> 
> 
> Captcha:  We don't want bots doing this
> 
> 
> Then this web server could run get_maintainers.pl and email the
> appropriate people with a generated formatted patch. It could also
> allow versioning. Today, people seem to be use to filling out web
> forms. Obviously, this isn't a requirement to use, but could be used by
> people that don't already know the Linux process.
> 
> It could be a bit smarter than get maintainers, as it could possibly
> detect typo and whitespace patches and then send it off to the trivial
> maintainer only.

That's the general idea, yes. For people that need to fix a single thing, or are
just getting started, this could be a good sanity checker. It can then use
the standard form entry validation processes and return with a bunch of red text
indicating errors without even sending the patch to the list.

-- 
Darren Hart
Intel Open Source Technology Center