Introducing status field to MAINTAINERS?

Introducing status field to MAINTAINERS?

[Stephen Hemminger]

While going through the old patches, noticed some that are in parts
of DPDK that are pretty much abandoned.

My suggestion would be introduce a subsystem status field in MAINTAINERS
similar to what is done in Linux kernel.

	S: *Status*, one of the following:
	   Supported:	Someone is actually paid to look after this.
	   Maintained:	Someone actually looks after it.
	   Odd Fixes:	It has a maintainer but they don't have time to do
			much other than throw the odd patch in. See below..
	   Orphan:	No current maintainer [but maybe you could take the
			role as you write your new code].
	   Obsolete:	Old code. Something tagged obsolete generally means
			it has been replaced by a better system and you
			should be using that.

Re: Introducing status field to MAINTAINERS?

[Bruce Richardson]

On Mon, Jul 03, 2023 at 03:10:57PM -0700, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> While going through the old patches, noticed some that are in parts
> of DPDK that are pretty much abandoned.
> 
> My suggestion would be introduce a subsystem status field in MAINTAINERS
> similar to what is done in Linux kernel.
> 
> 	S: *Status*, one of the following:
> 	   Supported:	Someone is actually paid to look after this.
> 	   Maintained:	Someone actually looks after it.
> 	   Odd Fixes:	It has a maintainer but they don't have time to do
> 			much other than throw the odd patch in. See below..
> 	   Orphan:	No current maintainer [but maybe you could take the
> 			role as you write your new code].
> 	   Obsolete:	Old code. Something tagged obsolete generally means
> 			it has been replaced by a better system and you
> 			should be using that.

That seems a useful addition. +1 to add the extra info.

Re: Introducing status field to MAINTAINERS?

[Thomas Monjalon]

17/07/2023 16:12, Bruce Richardson:
> On Mon, Jul 03, 2023 at 03:10:57PM -0700, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> > While going through the old patches, noticed some that are in parts
> > of DPDK that are pretty much abandoned.
> > 
> > My suggestion would be introduce a subsystem status field in MAINTAINERS
> > similar to what is done in Linux kernel.
> > 
> > 	S: *Status*, one of the following:
> > 	   Supported:	Someone is actually paid to look after this.
> > 	   Maintained:	Someone actually looks after it.
> > 	   Odd Fixes:	It has a maintainer but they don't have time to do
> > 			much other than throw the odd patch in. See below..
> > 	   Orphan:	No current maintainer [but maybe you could take the
> > 			role as you write your new code].
> > 	   Obsolete:	Old code. Something tagged obsolete generally means
> > 			it has been replaced by a better system and you
> > 			should be using that.
> 
> That seems a useful addition. +1 to add the extra info.

I think we prefer removing unmaintained code.

Re: Introducing status field to MAINTAINERS?

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Mon, 17 Jul 2023 18:04:51 +0200
Thomas Monjalon <thomas@monjalon.net> wrote:

> 17/07/2023 16:12, Bruce Richardson:
> > On Mon, Jul 03, 2023 at 03:10:57PM -0700, Stephen Hemminger wrote:  
> > > While going through the old patches, noticed some that are in parts
> > > of DPDK that are pretty much abandoned.
> > > 
> > > My suggestion would be introduce a subsystem status field in MAINTAINERS
> > > similar to what is done in Linux kernel.
> > > 
> > > 	S: *Status*, one of the following:
> > > 	   Supported:	Someone is actually paid to look after this.
> > > 	   Maintained:	Someone actually looks after it.
> > > 	   Odd Fixes:	It has a maintainer but they don't have time to do
> > > 			much other than throw the odd patch in. See below..
> > > 	   Orphan:	No current maintainer [but maybe you could take the
> > > 			role as you write your new code].
> > > 	   Obsolete:	Old code. Something tagged obsolete generally means
> > > 			it has been replaced by a better system and you
> > > 			should be using that.  
> > 
> > That seems a useful addition. +1 to add the extra info.  
> 
> I think we prefer removing unmaintained code.

I would prefer removal as well, but there are things like KNI and that stay
around for a year. And marking it as obsolete before removal would help.

There are also some marginally useful things like ethtool which no one
is maintaining.

Re: Introducing status field to MAINTAINERS?

[Bruce Richardson]

On Mon, Jul 17, 2023 at 06:04:51PM +0200, Thomas Monjalon wrote:
> 17/07/2023 16:12, Bruce Richardson:
> > On Mon, Jul 03, 2023 at 03:10:57PM -0700, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> > > While going through the old patches, noticed some that are in parts
> > > of DPDK that are pretty much abandoned.
> > > 
> > > My suggestion would be introduce a subsystem status field in MAINTAINERS
> > > similar to what is done in Linux kernel.
> > > 
> > > 	S: *Status*, one of the following:
> > > 	   Supported:	Someone is actually paid to look after this.
> > > 	   Maintained:	Someone actually looks after it.
> > > 	   Odd Fixes:	It has a maintainer but they don't have time to do
> > > 			much other than throw the odd patch in. See below..
> > > 	   Orphan:	No current maintainer [but maybe you could take the
> > > 			role as you write your new code].
> > > 	   Obsolete:	Old code. Something tagged obsolete generally means
> > > 			it has been replaced by a better system and you
> > > 			should be using that.
> > 
> > That seems a useful addition. +1 to add the extra info.
> 
> I think we prefer removing unmaintained code.
> 
Yes, but this gives us a good way to flag and track what the status of the
code is, so that we can see what is clearly unmaintained, or at risk of
becoming unmaintained. I really like this status option because it gives us
grades of maintenance - not just maintained/unmaintained binary option. For
example, the FreeBSD port of DPDK is maintained, but given how much time I
as maintainer spend on it, it would fall into the "Odd Fixes" category -
which gives anyone checking up on it a lot more information about its
future support than just saying it's "being maintained".