Re: RFC: Github PR bot questions

[Rob Herring <robh@kernel.org>]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2021 at 2:55 AM Mauro Carvalho Chehab
<mchehab+huawei@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> Em Thu, 17 Jun 2021 10:20:31 +0200
> Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@google.com> escreveu:
>
> > On Thu, Jun 17, 2021 at 8:53 AM Mauro Carvalho Chehab
> > <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > Em Wed, 16 Jun 2021 15:11:33 -0600
> > > Rob Herring <robh@kernel.org> escreveu:
> > >
> > > > On Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 11:18 AM Konstantin Ryabitsev
> > > > <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Hi, all:
> > > > >
> > > > > I've been doing some work on the "github-pr-to-ml" bot that can monitor GitHub
> > > > > pull requests on a project and convert them into fully well-formed patch
> > > > > series. This would be a one-way operation, effectively turning Github into a
> > > > > fancy "git-send-email" replacement. That said, it would have the following
> > > > > benefits for both submitters and maintainers:
> > > >
> > > > What makes this specific to Github PRs? A Github PR is really just a
> > > > git branch plus a target at least to the extent we would use it here.
> > > > The more of this that works on just a git branch, the more widely
> > > > useful it would be.
> > > >
> > > > > - submitters would no longer need to navigate their way around
> > > > >   git-format-patch, get_maintainer.pl, and git-send-email -- nor would need to
> > > > >   have a patch-friendly outgoing mail gateway to properly contribute patches
> > > >
> > > > Presumably, the bot would rely on get_maintainer.pl or it would get
> > > > who to send to based on GH repo and reviewers? Without work on
> > > > get_maintainer.pl, I don't think it will work well beyond simple
> > > > cases.
> > >
> > > Some sanity test is needed, as otherwise it will end by trying to send
> > > the patch to a large number of people.
> >
> > I think this system needs to use get_maintainer.pl results as is and
> > any fixing/filtering/sanity checking needs to go into
> > get_maintainer.pl itself.
> > get_maintainer.pl is what is used by lots of contributors, the only
> > option for any automated systems, what is used by new contributors if
> > they don't use this system anyway. And even experienced developers
> > know internal rules only for a few subsystems and use
> > get_maintainer.pl when sending a one-off patch to another subsystem
> > (what else?).
> >
> > I don't see where we are getting if we accept get_maintainer.pl
> > produces bad results and needs additional fixing in every system out
> > there (dozens) and when used by humans. All systems would need the
> > same filtering/checking rules and they need to keep in sync. What a
> > kernel developer would even need to do to fix something (add/remove
> > themselves)? Go and talk to a large unknown set of systems that
> > duplicate the same additional rules?
> >
> > And the only way to surface actual issues with get_maintainer.pl is to
> > start using it. In fact it's already widely used as is, so I am not
> > sure it's particularly bad.
>
> I'm not saying that get_maintainer.pl produces bad result. Depending
> on what is done, it could produce a very large output.
>
> Let's suppose that someone do something like globally renaming a
> widely-used kAPI, e. g. something like:
>
>         $ git ls-files|xargs sed s,mutex_,new_mutex_, -i
>
> A change like that would touch lots of subsystems, making get_maintainer.pl
> to spend a lot of time processing it, and producing thousands of
> entries (btw, we had a change somewhat similar to the above a long time
> ago when mutex API was introduced and most of the semaphores were converted
> to use mutex kAPI instead).

What I end up doing in those cases is only Cc'ing the subsystem
maintainers. But that's a manual step of dropping all the driver and
SoC maintainers. A related problem is if you want to put who should
apply the patch on To. That's maybe as simple as whether the
maintainer entry has a git tree. I'd tackle that, but it's Perl, no
thanks.

Rob