Re: increasing the number of GCC reviewers

[Basile STARYNKEVITCH <basile at starynkevitch dot net>]

Andrew Haley wrote:
> Basile STARYNKEVITCH wrote:
> > Perhaps could be discussed at the summit some way to increase the set of
> > reviewers, i.e. the set of people able to say Ok to a patch submitted on
> > gcc-patches@
> >     
>
> As I understand it, the set of reviewers allowed to say OK to a patch is
> limited to the set of people capable of reviewing these patches.  That is,
> there is a limited set of people with enough real knowledge of gcc to
> approve a patch.  

I know a lot of people who fully understand many of the patches I did 
submit, and who are not able to say Ok (because' their plain maintainer 
status disallows that).
And there are some patches which I did comment about, which I believe I 
did understand, and of course which I am not allowed to approve. I am 
certainly not alone in that case!

My feeling is on the contrary that the set of people having a real 
knowledge of gcc (or at least of substantial parts of it [*]) is much 
bigger than the set of reviewers allowed to say OK.

Regards.

PS. [note *] GCC is a huge software, so understanding well a part of it 
could be enough to understand some patches. And GCC is a huge software, 
so the set of people understanding all of it is shrinking; perhaps even 
it could be empty! (I never met any person claiming to understand all of 
GCC; for sure I will never understand all of it.).

--
Basile STARYNKEVITCH         http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/
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