Dear coreboot community,
I have been trying to merge few mainboard for some time, however I find it difficult to get reviews (and lead it towards merging), despite fulfilling all requests like Documentation entry.
Example: https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/30360/13#message-7720bf7ed3f447a878...
I have rebased it, added Documentation entry, however nobody touched it since I lastly updated it in November.
Following the same convention I have updated a Protectli FW6 Kaby Lake board patch today: https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/33839/
Probably this week I will also update another mainboard patch with documentation: https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/32076
Are there any exit criteria which initial mainboard commit should fulfil to be considered good quality and complete? I have also added changes to MAINTAINERS file (for the FW6) to indicate that these patches will not become a piece of unused and unmaintained code.
The first two patches are solid and all issues documented. All of them will receive an entry in MAINTAINERS file. I would very appreciate a little bit of your attention on them and possibly reviews.
I especially need the Kaby Lake board, because 3mdeb will soon begin upstreaming changes to support Boot Guard and Protectli FW6 is our reference platform. I don't want the mainboard patches to be a burden or blocking any related efforts. So I kindly ask for a tiny bit of your time to have a look at these patches. Let's improve coreboot together and make it a competitive (and even better) replacement of proprietary BIOS solutions.
With kind regards,
On 3/3/20 4:33 PM, Michal Zygowski wrote:
Dear coreboot community,
Hi Michal,
(...)
The first two patches are solid and all issues documented. All of them will receive an entry in MAINTAINERS file. I would very appreciate a little bit of your attention on them and possibly reviews.
I especially need the Kaby Lake board, because 3mdeb will soon begin upstreaming changes to support Boot Guard and Protectli FW6 is our reference platform. I don't want the mainboard patches to be a burden or blocking any related efforts. So I kindly ask for a tiny bit of your time to have a look at these patches. Let's improve coreboot together and make it a competitive (and even better) replacement of proprietary BIOS solutions.
Thank you for this email.
As the owner of 3mdeb, I would like to add $0.02. We are a small organization, but we have no problem to use part of our profit, for engineers to review code and support other community members (also those commercial ones). New customers often ask about our effectiveness in community, the number of maintained boards and the amount of code we have contributed. If the community keeps our reviews not merged, we cannot use that as proof of our engagement and quality. We always try to convince customers to support the upstreaming process and secure budget for that, but in light of no interest in merging code, customers would rather avoid that cost and keep forks on their repositories. This doesn't contribute to project health.
Some of our patches got no attention for over 1.5 years.
As coreboot leader, Michal can give +2, but we were hesitant to be the judge in our case and use that to merge our code. What we are asking is a decision about those patches - if anything is wrong we will fix that.
We believe this is a little bit bigger problem that should be addressed by coreboot leaders since it reflects the healthiness of the community and agenda of participating entities.
Best Regards,
I am glad to see Protectli FW2B/FW4B boards on master branch.
Big thanks to: Paul Menzel, Angel Pons, Matt DeVillier and Frans Hendriks (random order, not prioritizing anyone) for your time and reviews. I am really grateful.
And two more still to go: https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/33839 https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/30360
On 3/6/20 12:14 PM, Piotr Król wrote:
On 3/3/20 4:33 PM, Michal Zygowski wrote:
Dear coreboot community,
Hi Michal,
(...)
The first two patches are solid and all issues documented. All of them will receive an entry in MAINTAINERS file. I would very appreciate a little bit of your attention on them and possibly reviews.
I especially need the Kaby Lake board, because 3mdeb will soon begin upstreaming changes to support Boot Guard and Protectli FW6 is our reference platform. I don't want the mainboard patches to be a burden or blocking any related efforts. So I kindly ask for a tiny bit of your time to have a look at these patches. Let's improve coreboot together and make it a competitive (and even better) replacement of proprietary BIOS solutions.
Thank you for this email.
As the owner of 3mdeb, I would like to add $0.02. We are a small organization, but we have no problem to use part of our profit, for engineers to review code and support other community members (also those commercial ones). New customers often ask about our effectiveness in community, the number of maintained boards and the amount of code we have contributed. If the community keeps our reviews not merged, we cannot use that as proof of our engagement and quality. We always try to convince customers to support the upstreaming process and secure budget for that, but in light of no interest in merging code, customers would rather avoid that cost and keep forks on their repositories. This doesn't contribute to project health.
Some of our patches got no attention for over 1.5 years.
As coreboot leader, Michal can give +2, but we were hesitant to be the judge in our case and use that to merge our code. What we are asking is a decision about those patches - if anything is wrong we will fix that.
We believe this is a little bit bigger problem that should be addressed by coreboot leaders since it reflects the healthiness of the community and agenda of participating entities.
Best Regards,
On 3/9/20 11:19 PM, Michal Zygowski wrote:
I am glad to see Protectli FW2B/FW4B boards on master branch.
Big thanks to: Paul Menzel, Angel Pons, Matt DeVillier and Frans Hendriks (random order, not prioritizing anyone) for your time and reviews. I am really grateful.
Many thanks for your contribution.
Best Regards,
The mainboards has been merged thanks to your help.
Additional thanks to: Patrick Georgi and Maxim Polyakov. Thank you for contribution and reviews.
Am Fr., 6. März 2020 um 12:15 Uhr schrieb Piotr Król piotr.krol@3mdeb.com:
If the community keeps our reviews not merged, we cannot use that as proof of our engagement and quality.
[...]
This doesn't contribute to project health.
Indeed. Looking into Gerrit, we have >1000 commits open for coreboot.
Some of our patches got no attention for over 1.5 years.
Most Gerrit views are sorted by last change date, so often it already helps to rebase to master to bring it in front of reviewers again.
What we are asking is a decision about those patches - if anything is wrong we will fix that.
That's fair. As said, we have a rather big backlog, and to me that indicates that we should look into ways to reduce that, and keep things actionable (and with clear responsibility who's next: author, reviewer, ...) There's development going on with Gerrit that should assist that, and there are a few more ideas floating around in a different context that could also help here, but whatever we can improve in infrastructure, we still need to use it.
We believe this is a little bit bigger problem that should be addressed
by coreboot leaders since it reflects the healthiness of the community and agenda of participating entities.
I put the topic on the agenda for tomorrow's leadership meeting ( https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NRXqXcLBp5pFkHiJbrLdv3Spqh1Hu086HYkKrgKj... https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NRXqXcLBp5pFkHiJbrLdv3Spqh1Hu086HYkKrgKjeDQ/edit# )
Thanks, Patrick