Proposal for processing patches for the eCos 2.0 branch

[John Dallaway <jld@ecoscentric.com>]

Hello eCos Maintainers

I've spoken with some of you already about putting in place a process for 
deciding which patches do and do not get applied to the eCos 2.0 branch 
from now on. I would like to suggest that we post proposals for patching 
the 2.0 branch to the ecos-maintainers (sic) list. Each proposal should 
contain:

a) A brief name by which we can all refer to the patch.

b) A description of what the patch achieves or the problem which it 
addresses. No more than a few sentences.

c) A rationale for including the patch in the 2.0 final release. This 
rationale should be mindful of the need to minimise disruption to the 
branch as far as possible and therefore preserve the value of 2.0b1 testing 
feedback from the eCos community. A good rationale might be: "This patch 
touches the XYZ platform HAL package only. Support for this platform is 
currently completely broken." A bad rationale might be: "This patch 
provides feature ABC which I've been intending to implement for ages and 
would really like to see in the eCos 2.0 final release."

d) The patch itself, or a URL to the patch in the ecos-patches list archive.

I would like the eCos maintainers to then have a maximum period of 2 days to 
debate before (hopefully) a consensus is reached. If consensus is not 
reached then a simple majority verdict among the maintainers should 
prevail.

The above procedure should be adopted for all target side code in the branch 
at minimum. There is still quite a bit of work to be done on the configtool 
for 2.0 final so we might consider excepting configtool code from this 
process.

The usual procedures for patches to the trunk of the repository would be 
unaffected by all this.

Please comment on or otherwise indicate your acceptance of this proposal and 
whether you think configtool patches should be excepted or not.

Thanks

John Dallaway