[yocto] Documenting the mailing lists.

Darren Hart dvhart at linux.intel.com
Mon Aug 20 11:43:38 PDT 2012


Scott,

We've come across some more confusion about mailing lists recently. I've
sent a patch against poky to try and clear it up a bit in the source,
but we should also see about cleaning up the web descriptions of the lists.

We have two pages that describe the lists:

http://www.yoctoproject.org/community/mailing-lists
https://lists.yoctoproject.org/

My first recommendation would be to eliminate
http://www.yoctoproject.org/community/mailing-lists and replace links to
it with links to https://lists.yoctoproject.org. This eliminates the
need to keep the CMS version in sync with the mailman page. The mailman
page should be considered the master anyway as the Description field is
taken directly from the list administrative settings.

We should then work to create meaningful Descriptions of all the lists.
These should still fit on a single line, but I think we can improve on
what we have. For example:

meta-ti		Mailing list for the meta-ti layer

is not particularly enlightening. Perhaps something like:

meta-ti		Usage and development of the meta-ti layer

If we do this all at once, we can also ensure a consistent language,
tone, etc. I'll propose something for each list here and ask that
interested parties comment and correct in reply. Once agreed upon, the
admins of the respective lists can make the changes (all CC'd)

Current:
========
linux-yocto 	Development list for the linux-yocto*.git Linux kernel
		repositories
meta-ti 	Mailing list for the meta-ti layer
poky 		Poky build system developer discussion & patch
		submission for meta-yocto
shoeleather 	Neutral Board Lab Mailing List
yocto 		Discussion of all things Yocto
yocto-ab 	Yocto Project Advisory Board
yocto-advocacy 	Yocto Project Advocacy & Outreach AB Subgroup
yocto-announce 	Announcements from the Yocto Project
yocto-bsp 	BSP Interest Group
Yocto-builds 	Build failures and discusion about the build system
yocto-infrastructure 	Infrastructure


Proposed:
=========
linux-yocto 	Development list for the linux-yocto*.git Linux kernel
		repositories
meta-ti 	Usage and development list for the meta-ti layer
poky 		Usage and development list for the Poky build system
		(see README for patch submission)
shoeleather 	Neutral Board Lab Mailing List

I'm not sure what "neutral" is meant to convey. How about:

		Discussion list for the Shoeleather embedded board lab

yocto 		General discussion list for the Yocto Project and
		development for projects without dedicated lists

I think the yocto list is a bit problematic in that it mixes project
conceptual discussion, user help desk, and development all on the same
list. However, I'm trying to clarify what these actually are here - not
change anything.

yocto-ab 	Yocto Project Advisory Board ???

This should imply the intended audience. Is it just meant for members?
Is it meant as a way for non-AB members to observe what is going on?

yocto-advocacy 	Yocto Project advocacy & outreach AB subgroup

Same as above.

yocto-announce 	Announcements from the Yocto Project (low traffic)
yocto-bsp 	BSP Interest Group ???

There is no detailed description for this list, so I'm not sure what
this is really about.

Yocto-builds 	Build failures and discussion about the autobuilder

(includes typo fix, "build system" removed to avoid confusion with the
"poky build system")

yocto-infrastructure 	Infrastructure ???

Jefro or Michael, can you come up with something appropriate here?


For lists where certain guidelines should be used in communications and
patch submission, we should document that in the detailed description of
the list, such as [project] tags for example.

-- 
Darren Hart
Intel Open Source Technology Center
Yocto Project - Technical Lead - Linux Kernel



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