kernel updates from external trees

[Josh Boyer]

On Wed, 2004-04-28 at 10:15, raven at themaw.net wrote:
> But it's hard to get the attention of kernel tree maintainers. Often you 
> never know if your patch "is not good enough" or "what may be needed" as 
> no one gives it serious attention. Or it's just ignored over and over 
> again until someone with influence notices and asks "is something 
> wort while going on here". Next thing you get a mild caning for not 
> developing "out of the tree".
> 
> OK so it's not your problem. I know.
> 
> And I don't have any ideas on how to improve the situation. With so much 
> happening it must be very hard for the tree maintainers.

> How bout you?
> 

Yeah, it is hard sometimes.  The way I see it, you can do 2 things.

1) keep sending your patch(es) even if they get ignored at first if you
really think you are right.  Or

2) find one of those developers with influence and try getting it
accepted through them

Personally, I like option 2.  If I were a tree maintainer that had lots
of patches coming in, I wouldn't have time to look at everything that
Joe User sent me.  By going through developers that the tree maintainer
trusts, you spread the load maintaining the tree.

If you do it often enough and your patches are good, then usually the
developer you are going through will start to mention that the fixes are
coming from you.  Look at some of the mainline kernel Changelogs.  You
see stuff like:

<trini at kernel.crashing.org>
	PPC32: More cleanups of the IBM Spruce code.
	From Randy Vinson <rvinson at mvista.com>.

If you get enough of those, you will eventually become trusted.

And please don't think I am presenting this as my idea.  Obviously it's
already being done.  I was just putting in my $.02 since you asked :).

josh