On 12/10/21 14:30, Paul Gofman wrote:
On 12/10/21 23:05, Alexandros Frantzis wrote:
On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 09:44:23PM +0300, Paul Gofman wrote:
Hi Alexandros,
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the feedback!
On 12/10/21 20:56, Alexandros Frantzis wrote:
In the mailing list discussions earlier this year it was recommended that we go through wine-staging as a stepping stone towards upstream.
Do you recall which part of the prior discussion made such an impression? Staging used to be a testing ground for some patches, yes, but as far as I know no patchset was ever easier to get accepted upstream because of its presence in Staging. Nor that ever was a requirement for any patches to get upstream. So in this regard it would be probably more interesting to get some opinion if the direction the things are being implemented now is acceptable for upstream and Staging probably can't help with that.
My understanding was based on a discussion earlier the year, see for example the thread at:
https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2021-February/181667.html
Of course, the circumstances have changed since then, and it could be the case that going through wine-staging is not the most productive way forward anymore.
Yeah, I see... I don't think anything changed. I think it would be best if Zebediah would comment directly but I suppose the meaning of her older comment is that she's not against seeing it in Staging if there is a clear understanding that something along the lines of present implementation can go upstream. Maybe it might be a good way for some riksy patches to get some prior testing before the patches get finalized and go upstream but (correct me please if I am wrong) I don't think upstream maintainers recommended patches to go to Staging first or otherwise indicated that it is a shorter or preferred way for patches to go upstream.
I don't think I'd assert that patches, however large or small, *should* go through wine-staging as a "stepping stone" to upstream. I wouldn't see wine-staging as an end goal or even a necessary step. I'd rather look at it as a tool; essentially a way of getting broad testing. In essence, the same reason that staging branches exist in any project.
Thus I'm not sure that the sheer existence of a patch has helped its credibility upstream—it might have happened, but I haven't heard of it. On the other hand, I can name several patches which have benefited greatly from user testing while in wine-staging, such that a lot of bugs were flushed out by that time. ntdll-Junction_Points, Rémi's raw input patches, Andrew's winepulse timing rework, and my own server-default-integrity and ntdll-NtAlertThreadByThreadId are several such cases.
I can't speak for Alexandros, but if this is his goal in proposing the driver for wine-staging, I don't have any objections, at least on those grounds. And, frankly, when we're talking about an entire USER driver, I can anticipate that the testing that wine-staging provides would be quite useful.
I do have some other thoughts, but I'll have to defer them for a separate email.