Re: How to submit large patch for xtensa-linux?

[Roland McGrath <roland at redhat dot com>]

> Code which is in the source tree has a higher probabilty of beeing
> maintained and compatible with other changes, while sources stored
> elsewhere will inevitably become out of date.

We have made the same observation.  What this really means is that by
putting something in the main source tree, you can get the primary
maintainers to do a significant amount of maintenance for you.  We know
we are suckers in this way, we can't help scouring around for bit rot
from time to time.  But we are trying to stop being doormats for people
who don't want to maintain their contributions, and in fact wind up just
sucking our efforts without doing anything that helps our own lives.  

If it's truly inevitable that sources stored elsewhere will become out
of date, that tells us that noone else claiming sole responsibility for
their work will actually maintain it with high quality efforts.  If that
were the case, it would be a very sad state for users of anything that
we few people don't happen to have chosen to work on.  Such an
inevitability just strikes me as implausible.  Code is well-supported
when there are developers who care enough to support it and users who
care enough to make sure someone has the resources to do so.  We are not
introducing barriers preventing someone from doing a good job, we are
just putting up barriers preventing people from enticing us into doing
their job for them as an inevitable part of doing a good job on what we
do focus on.  That's right, the problem is that Ulrich Drepper is too
giving and helpful a person and we have to protect him from himself.
Shocking but true.



Roland