[RFC] In-tree documentation of driver deviations for Lucid and Maverick

[Tim Gardner]

On 11/23/2010 10:58 AM, Brad Figg wrote:
> On 11/23/2010 06:16 AM, Stefan Bader wrote:
>> As discussed on UDS, we want to document driver deviations in a file, to make
>> automated checks possible and to have the documentation even simpler to find.
>>
>> May proposal would be a file called debian.master/deviations.txt (which would
>> allow to add additional debian.*/deviations.txt for topic branches).
>>
>> The contents are similar to the MAINTAINERS file. Attached are the prepared
>> files for Lucid and Maverick.
>>
>> Comments? Objections? Modifications? Agreement?
>>
>> -Stefan
>>
>
> Looks good. I do have one thing to consider. If you're going to use this as the
> input for scripts, I'd suggest using json data format. This is easy to read text
> and the best part is it easily loads into python as a dictionary or list or whatever
> you want. Also it means that the name/value pairs can be readable strings instead
> of single letter abbreviations. I use this format all the time now and have
> convinced others to use it as well.
>
> Two entries would look something like:
>
> {
>       "drm subsystem" : {
>           "mailing list" : "kernel-team at lists.ubuntu.com",
>           "repo"         : "git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/smb/linux-2.6.32.y-drm33.z.git",
>           "files"        : [
>               "drivers/gpu/drm/*",
>               "include/drm/*"
>           ],
>           "comments"     : "Graphics bugs were claimed to be not fixable in 2.6.32. All upstream
>       	                  had moved to 2.6.33 and abandoned 2.6.32.
> 	                  The combined 2.6.32.y/DRM33.z tree is maintained as an upstream source
> 	                  for Ubuntu and Debian."
>       },
>
>       "sfc driver" : {
>           "mailing list" : "kernel-team at lists.ubuntu.com",
>           "repo"         : "git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-2.6.33.y.git",
>           "files"        : ["drivers/net/sfc/*"],
>           "comments"     : "Was requested in order to support newer servers and driver had changed
> 	                  beyond a point to SRU it later.
>                            "
>       }
>
> }
>

One argument for preserving the current format is that we can likely 
adapt scripts/get_maintainer.pl to also search the deviants file.

rtg
-- 
Tim Gardner tim.gardner at canonical.com