Re: maintainer profiles

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org>]

On Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:02:56 -0700
Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org> wrote:

> On 4/11/26 4:54 PM, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On 4/10/26 1:12 AM, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:  
> >> On Thu, 9 Apr 2026 17:18:39 -0700
> >> Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org> wrote:
> >>  
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> Is there supposed to be a difference (or distinction) in the contents of
> >>>
> >>> Documentation/process/maintainer-handbooks.rst
> >>> and
> >>> Documentation/maintainer/maintainer-entry-profile.rst
> >>> ?
> >>>
> >>> Can they be combined into one location?  
> >>
> >> Heh, from the 5 entries at maintainer-handbooks.rst:
> >>
> >>    maintainer-netdev
> >>    maintainer-soc
> >>    maintainer-soc-clean-dts
> >>    maintainer-tip
> >>    maintainer-kvm-x86
> >>
> >> we have 3 of them already there at maintainer-entry-profile.rst:
> >>
> >>    $ grep process/ Documentation/maintainer/maintainer-entry-profile.rst
> >>    ../process/maintainer-soc
> >>    ../process/maintainer-soc-clean-dts
> >>    ../process/maintainer-netdev
> >>
> >> It sounds to me that moving maintainer-tip and maintainer-kvm-x86
> >> to maintainer-entry-profile.rst would be enough to drop
> >> maintainer-handbooks.rst, keeping them consolidated on a single
> >> place.  
> > 
> > Yes, maybe. How about in the other direction:
> > move them all to maintainer-handbooks.rst?
> > 
> > After all, maintainer-entry-profile.rst says:
> >   For now, existing maintainer profiles are listed here; we will likely want
> >   to do something different in the near future.

(added Don and Thomas to the thread)

I don't have strong preferences, but the maintainer-entry-profile.rst
contains a "default" maintainership model, so, whatever file name,
I would preserve at least most of its contents somewhere.

Probably a more important discussions is where they should would
sit:

- at Documentation/process;
- at Documentation/maintainer;

Another option would be to move the contents from/two those two
books.

> > 
> > Also, does anyone know why some of these profiles are numbered and some
> > are not?  See
> >   https://docs.kernel.org/maintainer/maintainer-entry-profile.html#existing-profiles
> > for odd numbering.  
> 
> Because they are numbered in their own respective documentation areas...
> 

Yes: they're actually links to other places:

 .. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1

   ../doc-guide/maintainer-profile
   ../nvdimm/maintainer-entry-profile
   ../arch/riscv/patch-acceptance
   ../process/maintainer-soc
   ../process/maintainer-soc-clean-dts
   ../driver-api/media/maintainer-entry-profile
   ../process/maintainer-netdev
   ../driver-api/vfio-pci-device-specific-driver-acceptance
   ../nvme/feature-and-quirk-policy
   ../filesystems/nfs/nfsd-maintainer-entry-profile
   ../filesystems/xfs/xfs-maintainer-entry-profile
   ../mm/damon/maintainer-profile

On most cases, the profile is located together with other
subsystem-specific docs, as it makes easier to maintain there,
together with other documents from a given subsystem.

It also saves the need to add extra entries at MAINTAINERS
file.

Thanks,
Mauro