What to do when your patch gets ignored

[Andrea Tomassetti]

Hi Richard,
Thank you very much for your reply, I really appreciate it.

On Fri, Jun 10, 2022 at 2:18 PM Richard <richard_siegfried at systemli.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Andrea,
>
> Could you include a link to some mailing list archive so people her can
> look at the patch/code without having to google the right version? That
> makes answering a bit easier and people are lazy :)
>
Sure thing! I just didn't want my first message to be marked as spam
because of links. I will add a link to each of the mail in the list I
provided in my previous email.

> For now I can only speculate and from reading your mail two possible
> reasons come to my mind.
>
> 1. Your patch seems pretty big (in its effect/implications) and kernel
> maintainers are usually conservative, caring a lot more for stability
> and reliability than the typical github project. So changing something
> big as your first contribution when you have no reputation makes it more
> difficult and less likely to get applied/merged. Maybe chose something
> smaller, my first commits were understand parts of the tcp code in the
> kernel and writing doc for them
>
> 2. As you said the bcache mailing list is pretty inactive. Maybe the
> project is (semi-) dead? which might mean the maintainer(s) might have
> very little time/motivation to continue it, which would include
> reviewing and working with patches. I might be wrong here I don't know
> the current status of bcachefs but maybe your "error" here was chosing
> bchachefs to contribute and not something in the mainline kernel.
>
Wait, I think there's a small misunderstanding here: I contributed to
the bcache module that it's in the mainline kernel, not to the
bcachefs project. But, apart from this, yes this is something that
crossed my mind: maybe the maintainer is just accepting small bug
fixes (and he's actually reviewing and merging them when they arrive,
he's just ignoring my emails).

At this point, I really hope to have made some _huge_ mistake and that
someone can help me point it out and fix it, so I can maybe stop
speculating on why I'm not getting any answer.

Thank you,
Andrea

> Hope this helps. I might or might not write something more concrete on
> the code if you include a link in your answer
>
> -- Richard
>
>
> On 09/06/2022 15:39, Andrea Tomassetti wrote:
> > I'm writing here as a last resort in the hope that someone can,
> > kindly, help me understand what I'm doing wrong and why I'm being
> > ignored. Let's start from the beginning:
> >
> > On March 8th, I sent my very first patch "[PATCH] bcache: Use bcache
> > without formatting existing device" to the linux-bcache mailing list.
https://marc.info/?l=linux-bcache&m=164675141727884&w=3

> > I was very excited to finally contribute to the Linux kernel. After
> > just one day I received very positive feedback (unfortunately not from
> > the maintainer) and I followed up the same day; fulfilling the
> > requests.
https://marc.info/?l=linux-bcache&m=164682477802826&w=3

> >
> > On March 10th, I submitted the third version of my patch with fixes of
> > some warnings reported by the "kernel test robot". No replies from any
> > of the maintainers.
https://marc.info/?l=linux-bcache&m=164691268020582&w=3

> >
> > On March 22nd, I sent a kind ping: I got no replies from any of the maintainers.
https://marc.info/?l=linux-bcache&m=164795217223238&w=3

> >
> > On March 28th, I sent the 4th version of the patch.
https://marc.info/?l=linux-bcache&m=164846757707748&w=3

> >
> > On April 21st, I sent a kind ping replying to my last patch message,
> > asking for *any* feedback: I still haven't received any reply.
https://marc.info/?l=linux-bcache&m=165054833923209&w=3

> >
> > I fully understand that it's almost certainly my fault. Should I have
> > sent a RFC instead of sending a PATCH? I really don't know and the
> > worst part is that I will never know unless someone responds to me.
> > I'm willing to learn and ready to take accountability for my mistakes
> > but being ignored prevents me from doing so.
> >
> > The linux-bcache mailing list has zero-to-little activity, so I don't
> > think that my multiple emails got lost and on the other hand it's very
> > difficult to help the maintainer with other patch requests, because
> > there are so few of them (I read this could be a way to encourage the
> > maintainer to respond to your other requests).
> >
> > Should I just give up?
> > Should I resend my PATCH as RFC and hope for the best?
> >
> > I'm open to suggestions.
> >
> > Thank you very much in advance,
> > Andrea
> >
>
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