[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] Applying trivial things vs. sending patches.

[Luca Abeni]

Hi Michael,

Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> As the question of applying trivial things (typos, trivial optimizations,
> simplifications, ...) occasionally causes fights and flames i propose here
> the heal all ill solution ;)

I might be wrong here, but my _impression_ is that the fights and flames
are often caused by some other kinds of problems between developers, and
not by the wrong/bad commits.


> What about,
> Everyone who is ok with or is especially not ok with some things being
> directly commited to his code, should say so clearly in the MAINTAINERS
> file.
> That way we can on one hand avoid sending unneeded patches while OTOH
> avoid angering each other unintentionally, as has happened in the past
> already.

I think this is overkilling: if a patch is really trivial, committing it
without posting a patch will hardly cause any problem...

Of course the problem is that different people have different definitions
of "trivial" and "uncontroversial" (as already noted by other posters in
this thread). But if a developer thinks that a patch is trivial and commits
it while the maintainer thinks that the patch is not trivial and does not
agree with it, then the maintainer can just ask to revert the patch.
And the committer will be in charge of properly reverting it, and to clean
up the mess. In theory, this can happen without flames or wars... ;-)

If the same developer is involved in many incidents like the one cited
above (but I think this will not happen), then it is clear that such
developer has problems, and he may be asked not to commit anything to
files maintained by others.


				Luca