Re: calling all release branch managers

[Roland McGrath <roland at redhat dot com>]

> A prerequisite for good bugzilla procedures for branches is such 
> procedures for mainline development.

I disagree.  Certainly we would like to come to coherent procedures all
around.  But IMHO the place where the need for formality starts is with
the formal release branches.  Those are what users who are not themselves
libc hackers need to deal with, where there is concrete stable maintenance
going on that needs coordination, etc.

I certainly don't mean to stifle any discussion you would like to have.
I honestly don't think we'll ever achieve any useful formalities in
how we work on the trunk until we have the user-facing world of releases
and bug report management for release branches organized and functioning
as a daily practice.

> Would it be useful for people to identify bugs with patches that have
> gone unreviewed for some time (or where submitters of patches are
> otherwise awaiting maintainer comment)?  That is, if such bugs were
> identified would enough maintainers then review the patches?

If you think this might be useful then I'd suggest doing on the wiki.
It's a wiki precisely so that you can do first and ask later.

Frankly, this feels like a retread going where we have been before.
There is no shortage of complaints that trunk maintainers haven't paid
enough attention to some patch or other, nor of their repetition.  To me
it all still looks like simply complaining about maintainers not doing
more work.  I don't think that's going to get anyone anywhere.  

If you want things to go better and feel more organized, then do
something to help trunk maintainers feel some of the load of mayhem
taken off them, not add more.  The overall community has contributed so
little to getting the project organized that I cannot in good faith tell
any trunk maintainer that any new formalism reduces his work rather than
increases it.  

Perhaps what you have in mind will help in that way.  If it does, that's
great.  But experience makes me skeptical, if not downright pessimistic
(and I'm the nice one).  IMHO we'll have to achieve some working bug
procedures for release branches and experience them a bit in practice
before we can even decide whether and how we want to use bugzilla for
the trunk at all.


Thanks,
Roland