Jakub Kicinski [off-list ref] writes:

Hi!

tl;dr pw-bot now cross references the files touched by a *series* with
MAINTAINERS and gives access to all patchwork states to people listed
as maintainers (email addrs must match!)


During the last merge window we introduced a new pw-bot which acts on
simple commands included in the emails to set the patchwork state
appropriately:

https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230508092327.2619196f@kernel.org/ (local)
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/next/process/maintainer-netdev.html#updating-patch-status

This is useful in multiple ways, the two main ones are that (1) general
maintainers have to do less clicking in patchwork, and that (2) we have
a log of state changes, which should help answer the question "why 
is my patch in state X":

https://patchwork.hopto.org/pw-bot.html

The bot acts automatically on emails from the kbuild bot. Author of 
the series can also discard it from patchwork (but not bring it back).
Apart from that maintainers and select reviewers had access rights
to the commands. Now the bot has been extended to understand who the
maintainers are on series-by-series basis, by consulting MAINTAINERS.
Anyone who is listed as a maintainer of any files touched by the series
should be able to change the state of the series, both discarding it
(e.g. changes-requested) and bringing it back (new, under-review).

The main caveat is that the command must be sent from the email listed
in MAINTAINERS. I've started hacking on aliasing emails but I don't
want to invest too much time unless it's actually a problem, so please
LMK if this limitation is stopping anyone from using the bot.

Very cool! Follow-up question: are you expecting subsystem maintainers
to make use of this, or can we continue to rely on your benevolent
curation of patchwork states and only consider this an optional add-on? :)

Also, this only applies to the netdevbpf patchwork instance, right?

-Toke