On Thu, 21 Aug 2025 09:56:15 +0100 James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: What exactly do you mean by "feature inclusion"? Something that requires a new maintainer? As with the bcachefs, the issue was with how the new maintainer worked with the current workflow. Maybe you mean "maintainer inclusion and ejection"? > However, I'm sure others will have different ideas. The thing is, I believe there's a lot of features and maintainers that are added. Most go unnoticed as the feature is a niche (much like bcachefs was). Perhaps we should have a maintainer mentorship program. I try to work with others to help them become a new maintainer. I was doing that with Daniel Bristot, and I've done it for Masami Hiramatsu and I'm currently helping others to become maintainers for the trace and verification tooling. I share my scripts and explain how to do a pull request. How to use linux-next and what to and more importantly, what not to send during during the -rc releases. I'm sure others have helped developers become maintainers as well. Perhaps we should get together and come up with a formal way to become a maintainer? Because honestly, it's currently done by trial and error. I think that should change. -- Steve
