Re: Process for subsystem maintainers to get Hyper-V code out of staging.

On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 11:30:07PM +0000, Hank Janssen wrote:

Stephen/James/David,

Greetings to you all. As you might be aware, we submitted Hyper-V drivers to the kernel 2009.  
We have been extending these drivers with additional functionality and our primary focus 
now is doing the work needed to exit the staging area.

To give you some background, the following are Hyper-V specific Linux drivers:

                hv_vmbus           The vmbus driver that is the bridge between guest and the 
			host
                hv_storvsc          The SCSI device driver
                hv_blkvsc            The IDE driver
                hv_netvsc           The network driver

We think our drivers are pretty close to be reviewed by the subsystem maintainers.

We have been  working with Greg on  hv_vmbus, and several other driver issues as it 
relates to exiting staging. And now we are looking for guidance for the other drivers.

	1. Most important thing of course, did we contact the correct subsystem 
	    maintainers?
		i. IDE/Blkvsc		David Miller
		ii. SCSI/Storvsc		James Bottomley
		iii. Network/Netvsc	Stephen Hemminger

That's what the MAINTAINERS file says, right?

	2. What is the process to submit the code for review?

Like Documentation/SubmittingPatches shows, send patches.

	3. Which mailing list(s) do we need to use for the code reviews

Again, MAINTAINERS shows this.

	4. I assume normal patch format is required?

Yes.

	5. What additional information is needed

What's normally needed.

	6. Once they leave staging where do they need to go? Because they all
	    pretty much come as a package we were thinking drivers/hyperv might
	    be a good place.

That's up to the subsystem, if they want all network drivers in
drivers/net/ then they go there, same for scsi, it's up to the
maintainer.

There are still a few outstanding items we are currently working on. But they should be 
wrapped up shortly. (There are a few remaining FIXME comments in the code we are
cleaning up as I write this). But if possible we would like to get your feedback even as
we are addressing the issues we currently know about.

I would wait and only ask for review _after_ you fix the things you know
about first.  Otherwise it just wastes everyone's time.

thanks,

greg k-h