[cfe-dev] LLVM/Clang Maintainers Organigram??

[Sean Silva]

On Fri, Jan 9, 2015 at 12:50 PM, Mikael Persson <mikael.s.persson at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thanks, that seems to be what I was looking for.
>
> It is, however, kind of coarse. Maybe you should consider updating it and
> expanding it to a more fine-grained listing. I also think that this list
> could be publicized a bit more, so that one can actually find it more
> easily through the LLVM/Clang web-site and via google searches.
>

The first hit on google for "llvm code owners" and "clang code owners" is
http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#code-owners
I'm not sure what else you want us to do.


>
> It didn't occur to me, right away, to inspect revision histories for some
> files as a way to get the few relevant names for a specific part of
> llvm/clang. It seems that I had already tagged the right person for my
> patch (Sema / template instantiations, which seems to be Richard Smith's
> responsibility (?) as I had guessed from his name coming up often on those
> related topics on the mailing list).
>

Indeed. He's pretty busy though.


>
> Even though you could say "you should have thought about checking
> code_owners and/or revision histories", my humble feedback as an outsider
> is that I didn't think of that or know that, indicating that there might be
> a need for a more publicized / obvious way of getting to that information.
> Simply mirroring the code-owners lists on the public webpage (and linking
> to it from submission instructions) would be great (on second examination,
> it seems that LLVM's webpage link to it, but not the Clang "getting
> involved" instructions).
>

I'm not aware of any page claiming to be "how to contribute patches" that
doesn't end up linking you back to:
http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html
Also, this excellent presentation is among the first couple google results
for most searches relating to contributing to LLVM or Clang:
http://llvm.org/devmtg/2014-02/slides/ledru-how-to-contribute-to-llvm.pdf


>
> Finally, isn't the concept of "code owners" (from LLVM's docs) a bit
> fuzzy? Not really maintainers, not really reviewers, not really
> responsibility-baring, not really vetted / elected / performance-reviewed,
> etc... I would suggest that this might be formalized a bit more, in terms
> of responsibilities and expectations. Also, how would you detect that a
> part of llvm or clang is being under-maintained? Or that a particular
> maintainer is being over-whelmed by what he/she is responsible for?
>

We do know the answer to all these questions. We just don't have a
formalized system of keeping track of it. Having a formalized system has a
cognitive overhead that I don't think is worth it for the community.


> Except anecdotally or by complaints. For example, if a particular
> maintainer is consistently drowned in pending patch reviews, then that
> should and could be detected. There could also be more formalized
> dead-lines and stuff to make sure patches don't just drop off into the
> ether, or require constant bumping or re-submitting of them to pester the
> maintainers until they budge.
>

> > you can just write questions to the mailing list and a person, who
> takes responsibility and/or has a good domain knowledge, might pick your
> question/patch and provide some help or advice.
>
> That's a very hit-and-miss process. Lots of stuff just drops off into the
> ether. Even the phabricator system is very hit-and-miss, from what I'm
> seeing.
>

I found that starting out with really small and obvious patches helped me
understand the community practices; once you get the groove it's it really
isn't that bad.

-- Sean Silva


>
> > If you have specific concrete suggestions on how to reduce this
> impression, please list them.
>
> I don't really have too many concrete suggestions. I'm really just
> providing my feedback or impressions as an uninitiated contributor. In
> coder-speak, just treat this as a "bug report" that I'm giving about this
> issue, and I don't really have a patch for it, but I'll think about it, and
> I hope you guys will too.
>
> Cheers,
> Mikael.
>
>
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>
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