gcc's obvious patch policy

[Alan Modra <amodra at gmail dot com>]

Was Re: [buildrobot] [PATCH] mips: Really remove ENTRY_BLOCK_PTR
On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 10:08:45AM +0100, Steven Bosscher wrote:
> This patch is obvious and it fixes breakage. Please go ahead and commit it.

Sorry to pick on you here Steven, but this doesn't meet gcc's
definition of an obvious patch.  Don't believe me?  See
http://gcc.gnu.org/svnwrite.html#policies

Allowed as obvious in the gcc sources are typo fixes for comments or
similar, or reverting a bad patch you made.  That's it.  The power to
change anything else is reserved to the relevant maintainer.

Last I checked, you're not a MIPS maintainer..  Am I rebuking you?
No, not at all!  You just gave me a perfect lead in for the
following..  :)

/rant
It's utterly ridiculous that gcc doesn't have a reasonable obvious
patch rule.  Only comments?  In that all non-maintainers can be
trusted with?  What a poor lot of contributors we have.

Should a maintainer not even be able to authorise simple patches out
of their area as Steven just did?  That's what a strict interpretation
of the current rules in MAINTAINERS plus the current obvious patch
rule implies.  Or does the obvious patch rule just apply to
non-maintainers?
/no-rant

Can I recommend gdb's obvious patch policy?  It even tickles my sense
of humour.  "will the person who hates my work the most be able to
find fault with the change" - if so, then it's not obvious..

-- 
Alan Modra
Australia Development Lab, IBM