The subsystem status (S: field) can inform a patch submitter if the subsystem is well maintained or e.g. maintainers are missing. In get_maintainer, it is currently reported with --role(stats) by adjusting the maintainer role for any status different from Maintained. This has two downsides: - if a subsystem has only reviewers or mailing lists and no maintainers, the status is not reported. For example Orphan subsystems typically have no maintainers so there's nobody to report as orphan minder. - the Supported status means that someone is paid for maintaining, but it is reported as "supporter" for all the maintainers, which can be incorrect (only some of them may be paid). People (including myself) have been also confused about what "supporter" means. The second point has been brought up in 2022 and the discussion in the end resulted in adjusting documentation only [1]. I however agree with Ted's points that it's misleading to take the subsystem status and apply it to all maintainers [2]. The attempt to modify get_maintainer output was retracted after Joe objected that the status becomes not reported at all [3]. This series addresses that concern by reporting the status (unless it's the most common Maintained one) on separate lines that follow the reported emails, using a new --substatus parameter. Care is taken to reduce the noise to minimum by not reporting the most common Maintained status, by detault require no opt-in that would need the users to discover the new parameter, and at the same time not to break existing git --cc-cmd usage. The advantage of these changes is that subsystem status is now reported also for subsystems with no maintainers, and maintainers are reported as maintainers. Changes since v1 [4] - Change the approach to report subsystem status on separate lines via the new (effectively enabled by default) --substatus option. The "SUBSYSTEM [status]" output felt more and more clumsy. - Drop R-b from Kees due to the major change of approach. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20221006162413.858527-1-bryan.odonoghue@xxxxxxxxxx/ [2] https://lore.kernel.org/all/Yzen4X1Na0MKXHs9@xxxxxxx/ [3] https://lore.kernel.org/all/30776fe75061951777da8fa6618ae89bea7a8ce4.camel@xxxxxxxxxxx/ [4] https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250114-b4-get_maintainer-v1-0-ecf40f0d032d@xxxxxxx Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx> --- Vlastimil Babka (2): get_maintainer: add --substatus for reporting subsystem status get_maintainer: stop reporting subsystem status as maintainer role scripts/get_maintainer.pl | 49 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----------------- 1 file changed, 31 insertions(+), 18 deletions(-) --- base-commit: 2014c95afecee3e76ca4a56956a936e23283f05b change-id: 20250114-b4-get_maintainer-cc3358be81c0 Best regards, -- Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx>
