Re: [dpdk-dev] volunteer to be the maintainer of driver/net/intel sub-tree

[Thomas Monjalon <thomas.monjalon@6wind.com>]

Hi Wenzhuo,

2015-10-22 02:49, Lu, Wenzhuo:
> Hi all,
> Following the discussion of DPDK user space and the maintenance of development sub-trees, I'd like to volunteer myself to be the maintainer of sub-tree driver/net/intel. It includes all the PMD of Intel NICs. And Helin can be my backup.

Thanks for proposing.
You are already doing part of the work being maintainer of e1000,
and Helin for ixgbe and i40e.

> I suggest we create a new directory to move the driver/net/e1000, driver/net/fm10k... to it. And we can also create directories for other vendors just like the kernel driver do.

We don't need to move files to be able to manage them in a sub-tree.
For the day to day tasks, it's better to limit directory depth.
And think about what happened with Broadcom and Qlogic, we are not going
to move files when Intel will buy the NIC xyz.
Generally speaking, it's better to keep company names outside of technical things.

> Additionally, as we observed, some patch sets will not only change the files in drivers/net, but also some files in lib/librte_ether, doc, app, examples... Only being drivers/net/intel maintainer cannot work for these patch sets, especially for the new features. Applying partial feature patch set is not ideal. Ideally we need a maintainer to drive the RTE_ETHER discussion. Maybe Bruce can be a top-level maintainer. So, he can help when we face this scenario.

A sub-tree is not restricted to some directories. It must manage an
expertise zone, a technical domain, an area of interest, choose your words ;)

Today we have no working sub-tree. So we should start splitting areas in
some large grain and make it work. Then we can split more with a top down
approach.
So I think we should first create the subtree for networking drivers and wait
a little before having a subtree for Intel NICs.

Do you agree?