[PATCH 1/3] drm: Document maintainer duties

[Daniel Vetter]

I wanted to get Sean Paul to run the drm-misc show for a bit, for
training reasons and to increase the bus factor. And then realized
there's no docs about what maintainers are doing.

Fix that.

v2: Add backmerges and taking the blame.

Signed-off-by: Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter at intel.com>
---
 drm-misc.rst | 36 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 36 insertions(+)

diff --git a/drm-misc.rst b/drm-misc.rst
index 139d45e92edf..b6d01f2c7c2b 100644
--- a/drm-misc.rst
+++ b/drm-misc.rst
@@ -142,6 +142,42 @@ Slightly different rules apply:
   more involved rework in follow-up work. This way lengthy review cycles get
   avoided, which are a drag for both reviewer and author.
 
+Maintainer's Duties
+===================
+
+Maintainers mostly provide services to keep drm-misc running smoothly:
+
+* Coordinate cross-subsystem depencies and handle topic branches, sending out
+  pull request and merging topic pull requests from other subsystems.
+
+* At least once per week check for pending bugfixes (using ``dim status``) and
+  if there are any (either in `-fixes` or `-next-fixes`), send out the pull
+  request.
+
+* Fast-forward (when possible) `-fixes` to each released -rc kernel tag, to
+  keep it current. We try to avoid backmerges for bugfix branches, and rebasing
+  isn't an option with multiple committers.
+
+* During the merge-windo blackout, i.e. from -rc6 on until the merge window
+  closes with the release of -rc1, try to track `drm-next` with the
+  `-next-fixes` branch. Do not advance past -rc1, otherwise the automagic in
+  the scripts will push the wrong patches to the linux-next tree.
+
+* Between -rc1 and -rc6 send pull requests for the `-next` branch every 1-2
+  weeks, depending upon how much is queued up.
+
+* Backmerge `drm-next` into the `-next` branch when needed, properly recording
+  that reason in the merge commit message. Do a backmerge at least once per
+  month to avoid conflict chaos, and specifically merge in the main drm feature
+  pull request, to resync with all the late driver submissions during the merge
+  window.
+
+* Last resort fallback for applying patches, in case all area expert committers
+  are somehow unavailable.
+
+* Take the blame when something goes wrong. Maintainers interface and represent
+  the entire group of committers to the wider kernel community.
+
 Tooling
 =======
 
-- 
2.11.0