Comment by ho_schi
10 months ago
Context
I struggle to follow the LKML through the web-interface. LORE seems to provide a better view:
1. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/a869236a-1d59-4524-a86b-be08a15...
Maintainer of DMA wants to keep the code clean and not mixing languages[1]. And tries to avoid dangerous offers like "we will maintain it for you".[2]
2. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/a869236a-1d59-4524-a86b-be08a15...
Somebody references social media posts.
3. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/a869236a-1d59-4524-a86b-be08a15...
If shaming on social media does not work, then tell me what does, because I'm out of ideas.
4. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/a869236a-1d59-4524-a86b-be08a15...
Torvalds reaction.
My impression, while still struggling to follow the message flow:
I think social media and shaming are harmful and understand the reaction of Torvalds. The position of the DMA maintainer seems also to make sense for me, to keep code maintainable over decades it must remain in a nice and tidy state. That is the hard work.
PS: I want to avoid actual names of persons.
>Maintainer of DMA wants to keep the code clean and not mixing languages[1]. And tries to avoid dangerous offers like "we will maintain it for you".[2]
The Rust bindings are not in his tree. They do not touch his code. They are effectively no different than any other subsystem or driver which uses DMA. If he tried to veto some random driver that needed DMA from using DMA for no reason other than because he didn't want to have to deal with it if he changed the API in the future, that maintainer would be told to F-off because that's not his call.
Christoph is throwing NACKs around that he doesn't actually have the authority to NACK.
> The position of the DMA maintainer seems also to make sense for me, to keep code maintainable over decades it must remain in a nice and tidy state.
Perhaps so, but that discussion was two or three years ago. Stalling other contributors' work now is counterproductive, especially for changes that do not touch files maintained by them.
This does not justify any brigading behavior, though.