Conversation
krzk

Krzysztof Kozlowski

In a perfect world, I would have enough of time and energy to give every patch submitter personalized review, with a touch and nice words. I remember the times when I got one patch per week for my subsystem. Now, with like 600 patches and replies to me per week, I cannot. Reviewers are scarce and day has only 24h.

Unfortunately many issues are the same and do not require me, but ChatGPT. I figured out solution for all such trivialities: review templates.

But now, it's the second time submitter felt offended that I gave too obvious advice for an issue. What to do then? I will not write hundred times "please run checkpatch.pl", it's just waste of my time.
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conor

Conor Dooley

Reply to @krzk
@krzk I think you probably guessed correctly in the thread, and it is a bit of feeling patronised. The various bot-like replies do seem a bit impersonal, but if you are experienced enough to feel patronised, you're experienced enough to understand why the bot-like/form-letters are required.
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ljs

Lorenzo Stoakes

Reply to @conor
@conor @krzk I mechanically always run checkpatch.pl out of fear of humiliation on something silly. Hard to conceive of not doing that, though of course I've managed to make mistakes in every other axis :)

Maintainer scalability is hard.
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krzk

Krzysztof Kozlowski

Reply to @conor
@conor Indeed. I refurbished a bit my templates and added more personal-like-phrases. Maybe I need to work on them a bit more... But I am also not a native English speaker, so I don't know how to exactly write a really nice message which will be kind but not exaggerated, so silly. I bet if I write "Please be so kind and use scripts/checkpatch.pl." there will be a person who will feel mocked by this.
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krzk

Krzysztof Kozlowski

Reply to @ljs
@ljs @conor That's a good habit, I have the same, but we still can forget it from time to time. The point is not to be offended when someone tells me to compile the code or to run checkpatch.pl.
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ljs

Lorenzo Stoakes

Reply to @krzk
@krzk @conor it's very hard to convey tone and to account for people's feelings when something seems like a reprimand, I think the kernel can be especially brutal.

I've been on both sides (though as a junior contributor, less so on the giving), but certainly with day job have had plenty of experience and I do find adding a little bit of nicey-nicey language around these things can make a decent difference.

Relating to the problem 'I know I've personally done [X] a thousand times too :)' like comments etc.

It's hard to get it right and under maintainer pressure I imagine a huge pain in the arse.
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conor

Conor Dooley

Reply to @krzk
@krzk I think, at least among aware native speaks, it's accepted that non-natives often come across more bluntly.
And yeah, no matter how you work the form-letter, there is someone that will be put out because of it.
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sj

sj

Reply to @krzk
@krzk I think adding maintainer profile[1] and using 'Submit Checklist Addendum' for the suggestion could also be used. I'm unsure how many people will read and follow it, but I think having such a public recommendation would not make something worse.

[1] https://docs.kernel.org/maintainer/maintainer-entry-profile.html
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krzk

Krzysztof Kozlowski

Reply to @sj
@sj Unfortunately people in general: don't run checkpatch, don't read Submitting Patches doc, don't read other relevant docs, don't build test on many setups, don't test patches (in case of DT bindings). Sure, I can add one more doc for them to ignore :)
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