Wanted: Volunteer to code a Patchbot

I did some thinking just before this thread surfaced.

What can a patchbot be trusted to do properly? (see below)
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Linus got his style of working and he's got no intention whatsoever to change that. So what is needed is a bot that works according to Linus' taste, but goes behind his back when it comes to informing the poor patch submitters....

As always, simplicity rules.

None of this relies on a bot handling actual patching of code in the tree. A live, human (most of you, I assume) being will have to review and manually apply the patch.

None of this requires Linus to change his habits, he could still apply any patches sent to torvalds@transmeta. Trusted people could still send Linus patches directly.

But the newbies and untrusted guys without an established relationship to a trusted kernel developer get a little help to keep their patch updated.

It is not going to help on bad person chemistry or bad code. But it could weed out the obvious non-starters and help people get it right, without bothering busy kernel developers.

What can a patchbot be trusted to do properly?
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- receive mail sent to: patch-2.5-linus@kernel or patch-2.4-marcelo@kernel (you get the idea; version and tree)
- patch-id assignment for tracking of patches accepted by bot
- sender authentication/confirmation, as for mailing list subscriptions
- verify that patch
- applies to latest tree
- isn't oversized (by some definition)
- is correctly formatted
- contains a rationale (in some predefined format)
- route patch to correct maintainer(s), based on the files it touches (may require some initial work)
- inform sender that patch was forwarded to <maintainer>
- inform sender that patch was automatically rejected because it:
- does not apply to latest tree
- is too big/touches too many files
- does not compile (hardware reqs.? OSD labs?)
- does not contain aforementioned rationale
- isn't formatted according to CodingStyle (Does current code?)
- inform sender that patch did not end up in next snap of tree, possibly because of:
- conflict with other patch
- a human didn't like the taste of it (-EBADTASTE)
- maintainer has not reviewed the patch yet
(use the above assigned patch-id to detect if patch was applied)
- ask sender to rediff, review and resubmit patch
The bot could do this by itself. But it isn't linus-style. The sender should maintain his own patch.
- inform the sender how to kill a patch-id from being processed
- automatically kill patch-ids from being processed if sender does not respond within <time>
- killfile abusers (needs policy)
- publish patches on kernel.org and linux-kernel as they come in.
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Will Linus immediately killfile mail sent from this bot? Will hpa host it at kernel.org?
Will someone write the code if it gets thumbs up from linus/hpa? Is it going to make a difference?

_______________________________________________________________________
Get your free @pakistanmail.com email address http://pakistanmail.com

Yes, you have the idea most precisely. You left out:

- post the patch to the respective mailing list (the one the patch was sent to)

I don't think so, unless the bot is really poorly designed. This is *not* going to be a spambot. When the time comes, i.e., when the bot is designed in detail, or better, function, we'll ask him, ok? Or, if he so much as scowls in this direction, work stops right now ;-)

Again, once we know what the details of the bot are we'll ask him, i.e., how heavy a resource user it's expected to be, if he even thinks the idea is sound, etc. Right now he could only answer in general terms, so the thing to do is produce something concrete, not theoretical.

Somewhat unexpectedly, three coders responded to my call for volunteers:

Kalle Kivimaa <[email protected]>
Rasmus Andersen <[email protected]>
Giacomo Catenazzi <[email protected]>

I must say, I've been impressed with the insight of all three. Would you be a fourth? A mailing list has been set up (by Giacomo):

http://killeri.net/cgi-bin/alias/ezmlm-cgi

Yes, I think it is. At the very least it will give Linux users a place to go and troll for interesting patches, sort of like Freshmeat. I'm expecting a considerably more from it though. Look no further than your own list above to see what it can do. Which, by the way, bears a remarkable resemblance to the list we just hashed out a few minutes ago.

Daniel

(and repeat this message at least 21 times)

Do you think you could please take the time to fix your email setup so we don't get all these repetitions.

Thanks.

Russell King ([email protected])                The developer of ARM Linux
             http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/personal/aboutme.html

It does not matter terribly but the list has been setup by Kalle Kivimaa <[email protected]>.

        Rasmus([email protected])

Oh yes it matters. Sorry Kalle, and thanks for the fast work.

Daniel

It's possible he was the innocent victim of that freemail service, in which case, the thing to do is switch to a different freemail service. Yahoo is pretty good.

Daniel