airlied brought this up in another thread [1], but I think this warrants
a separate, more visible topic.
The current xserver development process can be summarised as:
* patches must be on the list and get a reviewed-by
* pull request to Keith [2] (or direct CC)
* Keith is the only one to push to master
This has worked reasonably well since we started for server 1.8. If
nothing else, it has made git master a lot more reliable. However, Keith
is the bottleneck to get anything into master. The delay to get a pull
request merged has been quite random, depending on Keith's other
workload. I'm struggling with this a lot at times. Bugs cannot be closed
even though the work is done, local branches cannot be merged and
finalised. Apparently others face similar issues.
It's an easy thing to fix, and the end of the 1.14 timeframe is coming
anyway so now is the ideal time. tbh, I don't want a free-for-all master
again, but we do need more people with commit access. So an initial
proposal is:
* leave the current window of 3/2/1-ish months for the different devel
stages
* leave the requirement for a reviewed-by
* one RM, calling the shots for when releases are made and generally
being the reviewer of last resort and arbiter where needed
* 3-5 people with commit access during the devel and general bugfix
windows. They scoop up pull requests and commit them, if the patches
have rev-by tags [3]
* 2 people during the last bugfix window (emergency fixes only). The
second person as backup to the RM to make sure we don't see delays.
This is a fairly conservative change, just aimed at removing the current
bottlenecks. There are other areas of improvement, but they're probably
subject to a separate discussion.
Volunteers for committers are welcome. Though note that this is not to
get your own patches in quickly, you'll also have to scoop up and review
other patches. (fwiw, I volunteer)
Comments?
Cheers,
Peter
[1] http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-devel/2013-February/035558.html
[2] technically the "release manager", but Keith has been the RM since
1.8, so...
[3] this could be automated by a bot, but I don't have time to do set
this up
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