Subject: Re: [PATCHSET] libata: PATA driver for Celleb

From: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2007 18:52:02 +1100

> I'm totally confused about who the heck is the spidernet maintainer.

Me too :-)

> My 
> inbox is pelted by spidernet driver updates from multiple people, and 
> often the spidernet patches (regardless of author) receive comments that 
> give me pause.  The MAINTAINERS file says
> 
> > SPIDERNET NETWORK DRIVER for CELL
> > P:      Jim Lewis
> > M:      [email-masked]
> > L:      [email-masked]
> > S:      Supported
> 
> but I do not see patch roll-ups or much activity from him at all.  In 
> practice, it seems like Linas does patchsets for spidernet, but there is 
> also Jakob Osterkemp(sp?) and Ishizaki and....

I think Jens Osterkampf should be the final ACK/NAK'er as he has all the
hardware to test except the Toshiba gear :-) In fact, Jens, if you are
ok with that, I'd like to have you be the maintainer of that driver,
unless you think it's better for Linas to do it.

> My overall impression of spidernet development is that EVERYBODY is 
> submitting patches at once, and expecting me to sort out the mess.  No 
> thanks.

It's been a bit of a mess. I suggest we get our gear together (Linas,
Jens, Kou) and provide you a single patch set from a single source in
the upcoming couple of days coming from the designated maintainer.

Jens ? Linas ? Is that ok with you guys ? Who gets to be that
maintainer ?

_ALSO_ since spidernet uses (and modifies) sungem_phy.c, we need either
DaveM or my ack there (DaveM is sungem maintainer but I wrote sungem_phy
and most of it is only used on powermacs).

Thus let's move that back to the cbe-oss-dev mailing list, our
designated maintainer will post there a candidate patch set, I will
verify the sungem_phy change is ok with powermac (I myself haven't
followed enough to figure out what patch is the latest there), we'll all
test on our respective hardware, and then that maintainer will send you
one patch set to apply.

That shouldn't take more than a few days. If we miss -rc1, well, then it
will be in -rc2, as most of the patches have been around for long enough
etc... it's really mostly a matter of getting our gear together.

> Speaking with one voice would be much appreciated.  And said speaker 
> should patch the MAINTAINERS file to reflect reality.

Agreed,

Ben.