On Fri, Sep 30, 2022 at 05:18:52PM +0100, Bryan O'Donoghue wrote: > > So the root cause of your confusion was you couldn't figure out > > the fact that "supporter" in the output of get_maintainver.pl means > > "maintainer of a supported subsystem", wasn't it? > > > > I guess all you need would be just a short notice along the lines of: > > > > "supporter" in the output from get_maintainer.pl means "maintainer > > of a supported subsystem". > > > > No? > > We discussed that a bit earlier. > > https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20220928003006.230103-1-bryan.odonoghue@xxxxxxxxxx/T/#u > https://lkml.org/lkml/2022/9/28/1394 > https://lkml.org/lkml/2022/9/28/1511 > https://lkml.org/lkml/2022/9/29/188 > > I think its fair to say the consensus so far is to leave the > get_maintainer.pl output as is. FWIW, I actually think the output of get_maintainer.pl is pretty broken in this regard. (Then again, I've never thought all that highly of get_maintainer.pl, *especially* because of the bogus git fallback, but that's another story.) Consider: % ./scripts/get_maintainer.pl --file drivers/acpi/power.c "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael@xxxxxxxxxx> (supporter:ACPI) Len Brown <lenb@xxxxxxxxxx> (reviewer:ACPI) linux-acpi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (open list:ACPI) linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (open list) I'm sorry, but that's just *wrong*. Rafael is the *maintainer* of the ACPI subsystem, and the term "supporter" is rarely if ever used anywhere in our docs. As I said earlier, trying to treat S: field to say anything about the entitles listed under the M: field of the Maintainers file is a category error. Consider: ACPI subsystem is is "supported". From a user's perspective, what are they supposed to take from that? That the ACPI subsystem is somehow better supported than say, the MM subsystem (which is only "maintained"), or all of Linux networking, which is also "maintained". And so Rafel is a "supporter", but David Miller and Andrew Morton are "maintainers", respectively. ?!? I think the original rationale behind the S: field is to help people understand, in particular for device drivers, how solid a particular device driver might be. Was it officially supported by the hardware manufacturer? Was it supported by a some random student who hacked something together? Was the still being actively maintained? But even then, just because a driver is "officially" supported by the hardware manufacturer doesn't necessarily mean that it is any more reliable, or high quality, than something which is being supported by someone who supposedly isn't getting paid to support it. (And there are plenty of subsystems listed as "maintained" where the people listed under M: are most certainly getting paid to work on it.) - Ted
