Patch queue and reviewing (Was Re: Generator programs can only be built with optimization enabled?)

[Diego Novillo]

Daniel Berlin wrote on 06/13/06 23:24:

> Does anyone believe this would help make sure patches stop dropping
> through the cracks?
> 
Not really.  Technical solutions to social problems rarely work.  Patch
review is mostly a social problem.  I am frequently part of the problem,
unfortunately.  Mostly this is a time constraint problem, there are only
so many hours in a working day.

I don't really have a good idea on how to address the core problem,
other than to encourage adding more maintainers.  A couple of Summits
ago I think we discussed the idea of having secondary maintainers: folks
who may not feel fully confident about an area, but may want to chime in
with an initial review which the primary maintainer could then use to
help with the final review.

That doesn't mean that the patch queue is a bad idea.  On the contrary,
but if a patch is destined to fall through the cracks, no amount of
technical infrastructure will prevent it from doing so.