Re: [edk2-devel] [Patch 1/1] Maintainers.txt: Update based on active community members

["Laszlo Ersek" <lersek@redhat.com>]

On 10/30/23 23:18, Kinney, Michael D wrote:
> Hi Laszlo,
> 
> I do not support orphaned categories and that option should be
> removed from Maintainer.txt. One of the motivations to get 
> Maintainers.txt updated is to work on the set of tasks related to 
> using GitHub PRs for code review.

I see. I didn't know. So, the mailing list based review process is going
away.

> If a component is orphaned,
> then nobody would be assigned to a PR in that area and the PR
> would be stuck and would eventually be deleted for no activity.
> A terrible experience for a submitter.

I agree, although just because a PR is auto-assigned to reviewers, tehre
is no guarantee that those reviewers will provide timely feedback.

(The current, long response times on the list may have two reasons; one,
reviewers missing patches (in spite of the direct CC's); two, reviewers
not acting on the patches they are aware of. Reviewing PRs on GitHub may
help with the former, but I'm doubtful it will help with the latter.
Anyway, I'm not trying to object to the workflow change.)

> If there is a feature for which there is no longer any support,
> then I recommend we find a way to remove it from the head of the
> repository.  The feature is still available in the history and
> in previous releases when it was supported.

OK!

> If there is a future need for the feature and there are those that
> are willing to support it, it can always be resurrected from the
> history.
> 
> If it is a critical feature that will break the entire project 
> if it is removed, then we must find community members that are 
> willing to own it.
> 
> The immediate backup for this scenario is the EDK II Stewards, but
> They may not have the background on the specific feature to maintain
> it well.  For example, I am currently helping with the NetworkPkg
> because there are no maintainers and I have been recruiting without
> success.

It's unfortunate that NetworkPkg has no dedicated maintainer; UEFI
network boot (for example in OVMF guests) is certainly used in the industry.

I'll try to help out with patch reviews for NetworkPkg as well.

> I would like the see the SignedCapulePkg removed.  There are a
> couple platforms in edk2-platforms that depend on it.  There is
> another task to review the actively supported platforms in 
> edk2-platforms.  If those platforms are removed, then SignedCapulsePkg
> could be safely removed from the head of edk2.

... or else SignedCapulsePkg could be moved to edk2-platforms.

(While I prefer to keep everything in one big tree, I agree that moving
SignedCapulsePkg to edk2-platforms would be consistent with past
subsystem movements.)

> SourceLevelDebugPkg has a similar issues of no maintainers.  The
> platforms maintained in edk2 repo do not depend on it to do source
> level debug.  It is more of a physical platform debug capability.
> Perhaps this feature should be moved to the edk2-platform.  There
> was a brief discuss at the UEFI Plugfest to update this debug 
> feature because the current one depends on very old tools.

I'd even welcome that, as I see SOURCE_DEBUG_ENABLE an unnecessary (not
functional) complication in the OVMF DSC files.

OK, let us review the patch again from scratch, with these points in mind.

Thanks
Laszlo



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