Re: [Gdbheads] proposed change to GDB maintainership rules

[Elena Zannoni]

David Carlton writes:
 > On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 14:19:25 -0500, Andrew Cagney <address@hidden> said:
 > 
 > >> And why on earth would reducing the number of symtab maintainers
 > >> help, why is it a better idea than opening up the process so that
 > >> people who have shown that they know the code can approve patches?
 > 
 > > Who says the number would be reduced?
 > 
 > That's what you did the last time this came up - you convinced people
 > to remove their names from MAINTAINERS, without proposing any
 > replacements.  Having said that:
 > 

It is not up to Andrew only to propose new maintainers. You cannot
possibly be familiar with how maintainers have been appointed until
now, because you haven't been part of the process. One of the current
global maintainers (doesn't have to be a global maintainer, really but
this is what I have gone through, so this is what I'll describe) sends
out mail to the other global maintainers (not on the public lists) to
nominate somebody they feel would be a good maintainer (because they
have worked with the person and they can voucher for his/her
integrity, good judgment, knowledge of the area, etc. etc.). The
maintainers say their yey or nay. If there is consensus that the
person should become a maintainer, then some of them will approach
him/her privately asking if they would be interested in being
maintainer. If the answer is yes, then done deal. The change gets
announced publicly. So, really it is not Andrew's fault that there are
2 symtab maintainers instead of 10. 


 > > Have unreliable maintainers step back, certainly, possibly make way
 > > for new ones.
 > 
 > I still don't see what good getting rid of maintainers does.  I wish
 > symtab patches got reviewed more frequently, but that doesn't mean
 > that I don't trust Jim's or Elena's judgment.  (On the contrary, I
 > have the highest respect for both of their judgments.)  They already
 > review lots of patches, just not always in as timely a fashion as I'd
 > like; I don't see why replacing them would be better than adding more
 > people to help them.
 > 

I invite you to take a very close look at the gdb-patches mailing list
for the year 2003, and count the number of patches each of us (Blandy
and I) separately approved.

As far as symbol table maintainership goes, I'd love to have you on
board, but I wanted to see your branch merged first. That's why I
haven't done anything about this. There honestly is another person
that I wanted to nominate for something else, but then all this
happened, so I haven't done it yet.