Getting xserver patches reviewed

[Barton C Massey]

There's clear demand for some more formal and viable process
for getting patches reviewed and accepted.  It's great that
Daniel and a few others try to keep up with this stuff, but
they're pretty clearly overwhelmed; one can only do so much
of this kind of support while also contributing new work.

What we really need is someone with good organizational
skills to put together and be responsible for the right
process.  The kernel does give us something of a model to
start with.  I'd suggest that some lead person needs to

  * Identify subsystems that need maintenance.  These
    probably correspond to modules or groups of modules in
    the build.

  * Identify or recruit maintainers for these subsystems.
    Maintainers should have the power to grant commit
    privileges to their "master" tree at freedesktop.org,
    and to manage commits for their subsystem.  The
    modularization should make this easy...

  * Put together a software system for queueing and triaging
    submitted requests to each subsystem.  This could be
    built on the current Bugzilla, but if so it needs to
    include mechanisms for notifying key folks when things
    aren't being addressed in a timely fashion, and for
    keeping statistics on outcomes.

  * Monitor all this and report to the X.Org Membership by
    way of the Foundation Board on interesting issues etc.

Please notice me carefully not volunteering for this
job---I'm already oversubscribed.  I will take it on only if
some more suitable and available person doesn't step up, and
then only reluctantly---I'm likely to botch it due to lack
of attention.

I'm speaking just for myself, but I'd be surprised if the
X.Org Foundation wouldn't be interested in helping to get
this going in any reasonable way anyone can think of.  It's
long overdue.

    Bart Massey
    bart at cs.pdx.edu