Re: [PATCH] RFC: add MAINTAINERS file

From: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>
Date: Apr 2, 2024, 05:39 UTC
Message-ID: <ZguaLjWGte3zdQGW@tanuki>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqzfuc7muw.fsf@gitster.g>

On Mon, Apr 01, 2024 at 03:13:27PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

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> Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com> writes:
> 
> >> I don't think of this as "big enough to require this". I rather think
> >> about the onboarding experience for new folks here. Sure, we can ask
> >> them to "Please run git-shortlog(1) to figure out whom to Cc". But if we
> >> instead provide a nice script that does it for them then we make their
> >> lifes easier.
> >
> > Do you think that the script in contrib/contacts does a sufficient job
> > at this?

I admittedly never used it much, either. I didn't see a lot of benefit because I can figure out myself whom to Cc. That would be less true for newcomers to the community though, where it may be more useful.

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> Yup, that was my first reaction.  If it is not sufficient to
> mechanically mine history with shortlog or blame or contacts, and if
> we can add a high quality hand-curated input to improve the result
> contacts gives us, that would be a progress. I view the MAINTAINERS
> format just one way to give such human generated input.

Agreed. I don't think that we have to pick either MAINTAINERS or the "contrib/contacts" script, but would rather want the existing script to honor MAINTAINERS as an additional data source.

When it does know about both I also see myself using it more frequently in the future. It would be nice if git-send-email(1)/git-format-patch(1) had a switch `--cc-command=` or similar that you can pass the script to so that To/Cc lines would be added automatically. The script then gets the commit range as input and can decide based on whatever criteria whom to Cc. To the best of my knowledge that is not currently possible.

Patrick