Maintainer Handbook: Maintainer Entry Profile

As presented at the 2018 Linux Plumbers conference [1], the Maintainer
Entry Profile (formerly Subsystem Profile) is proposed as a way to reduce
friction between committers and maintainers and encourage conversations
amongst maintainers about common best practices. While coding-style,
submit-checklist, and submitting-drivers lay out some common expectations
there remain local customs and maintainer preferences that vary by
subsystem.

The profile contains documentation of some of the common policy
questions a contributor might have that are local to the subsystem /
device-driver, special considerations for the subsystem, or other
guidelines that are otherwise not covered by the top-level process
documents.

The initial and hopefully non-controversial headings in the profile are:

    Overview:
    General introduction to how the subsystem operates

    Submit Checklist Addendum:
    Mechanical items that gate submission staging, or other requirements
    that gate patch acceptance.

    Key Cycle Dates:
     - Last -rc for new feature submissions: Expected lead time for submissions
     - Last -rc to merge features: Deadline for merge decisions

    Resubmit Cadence: When and preferred method to follow up with the
    maintainer

Note that coding style guidelines are explicitly left out of this list.

See Documentation/maintainer/maintainer-entry-profile.rst for more details,
and a follow-on example profile for the libnvdimm subsystem.

[1]: https://linuxplumbersconf.org/event/2/contributions/59/

Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@kernel.org>
Cc: Steve French <stfrench@microsoft.com>
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Tobin C. Harding <me@tobin.cc>
Cc: Olof Johansson <olof@lixom.net>
Cc: Martin K. Petersen <martin.petersen@oracle.com>
Cc: Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@ffwll.ch>
Cc: Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>
Cc: Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@google.com>
Cc: Alexandre Belloni <alexandre.belloni@bootlin.com>
Cc: Paul Walmsley <paul.walmsley@sifive.com>
Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/157462919309.1729495.10585699280061787229.stgit@dwillia2-desk3.amr.corp.intel.com
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/MAINTAINERS b/MAINTAINERS
index 9611ea6493b3..9d3a2464e173 100644
--- a/MAINTAINERS
+++ b/MAINTAINERS
@@ -102,6 +102,10 @@ Descriptions of section entries
 	   Obsolete:	Old code. Something tagged obsolete generally means
 			it has been replaced by a better system and you
 			should be using that.
+	P: Subsystem Profile document for more details submitting
+	   patches to the given subsystem. This is either an in-tree file,
+	   or a URI. See Documentation/maintainer/maintainer-entry-profile.rst
+	   for details.
 	F: *Files* and directories wildcard patterns.
 	   A trailing slash includes all files and subdirectory files.
 	   F:	drivers/net/	all files in and below drivers/net