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Linux-hotplug needs an official maintainer. Am I right?

DISCUSSION Miles Lane 6 participants 6 messages Jan 16, 2001 – Jan 17, 2001

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Miles Lane

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#0 lore raw

Hi,

Currently we have been sending some of our general hotplug architecture patches to Johannes Erdfelt for blessing and forwarding to Linus. This is due to historical reasons -- David Brownell did a lot of the early work and his test implementation was for USB. Since hotplug implementation has now, most certainly, expanded far beyond the scope of USB, it would seem to make sense that we choose someone to be the point person for patch submission.

Since the hotplug implementation effort will include some ongoing general architecture work in addition to bus-specific work, perhaps we need a maintainer for the generic pieces, while the bus-specific patches get routed through the bus maintainers. Does this make sense?

Possible candidates for generic hotplug architecture maintainer would seem to include:

David Brownell
Andrew Morton
Adam Richter
Jeff Garzik
Kieth Owens

I am quite sure I am leaving a few people out, so please speak up if you want the position!

This list of names is simply a product of my observation about who has been doing the most in designing the hotplug architecture and has been coding large chunks of the current implementation.

What would seem most important is that whoever takes the job have Linus and Alan's trust in regards to making good design decisions and having great code review abilities. Obviously, having time to devote to this work would be helpful, too.

I hope this helps,

Miles

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#1 lore raw
Quoted 6 lines · Miles Lane

Since the hotplug implementation effort will include some ongoing general architecture work in addition to bus-specific work, perhaps we need a maintainer for the generic pieces, while the bus-specific patches get routed through the bus maintainers. Does this make sense?

If David doesn't want to do it, I'll volunteer. He has done the most work on it so far and deserves it.

However, remember that the maintainer tends to have development time decrease, just ask Randy about being the USB maintainer :)

Also this looks like more of a coordination job, as all of the individual pieces are all covered by other people, and the main job will be notifying the current maintainers, and getting their buy in.

thanks,

greg k-h

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greg@(kroah|wirex).com

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#2 lore raw
In reply to Miles Lane
Quoted 5 lines
Quoted 5 lines

Since the hotplug implementation effort will include some ongoing general architecture work in addition to bus-specific work, perhaps we need a maintainer for the generic pieces, while the bus-specific patches get routed through the bus maintainers. Does this make sense?

I'm not sure we know yet whether Linus is looking for that. And there really aren't many "generic" pieces; call_usermodehelper() is about all, but linux-hotplug can't own "kmod.c" (I'd suspect).

The issue I see is the need to make sure the coordination gets done -- like updating modutils before integrating an ABI change. And that seems like a pretty broad Linux development issue.

Quoted 2 lines

If David doesn't want to do it, I'll volunteer. He has done the most work on it so far and deserves it.

Or maybe a break from it? :-) Thanks! I'd like to hear from Linus on this topic before I say more.

- Dave

Quoted 6 lines

However, remember that the maintainer tends to have development time decrease, just ask Randy about being the USB maintainer :)

Also this looks like more of a coordination job, as all of the individual pieces are all covered by other people, and the main job will be notifying the current maintainers, and getting their buy in.

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#3 lore raw
In reply to Miles Lane
Quoted 6 lines · David Brownell
Quoted 6 lines
Quoted 6 lines

Since the hotplug implementation effort will include some ongoing general architecture work in addition to bus-specific work, perhaps we need a maintainer for the generic pieces, while the bus-specific patches get routed through the bus maintainers. Does this make sense?

Let's not over-organize here... start out small, and grow as need dictates.

There is clearly a need to some sort of central coordination.. the chaotic hotplug development to date is proof enough of that. I don't have a preference for a maintainer, but I sure as hell don't want to do it. My todo list is long enough as it is. :) (I do have a preference for who -shouldn't- be the maintainer...)

Oh make sure David Hinds is involved, too. Before USB came along, I would consider him "the" hotplug guy. His knowledge and experience will be invaluable, especially in the areas of PCMCIA and CardBus. He doesn't seem to read every single message on lkml (who does?), so make sure he's in the loop on important hotplug issues too...

Jeff

Signature · 8 lines
Jeff Garzik       | "You see, in this world there's two kinds of
Building 1024     |  people, my friend: Those with loaded guns
MandrakeSoft      |  and those who dig. You dig."  --Blondie

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#4 lore raw
In reply to Miles Lane
Quoted 2 lines · Jeff Garzik

Let's not over-organize here... start out small, and grow as need dictates.

I too am concerned about the possibility of this list
becoming a bureaucracy. That hasn't happened yet, but I am glad that Jeff brought it up.

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