Taking Over MIPS Maintenance

Taking Over MIPS Maintenance

[YunQiang Su]

Greetings all,

I would like to self-nominate as the new GCC MIPS maintainer. Matthew Fortune is listed in MAINTAINERS as the current maintainer of GCC's MIPS Port. However, it has been years since he left MIPS Technologies and had since been inactive.

I currently work for CIP United Inc., which is the exclusive licensor and operator of MIPS IPs in China, Hong Kong, and Macau. Part of our operations include maintaining open source software solutions for MIPS and we are looking to continue maintaining GCC's MIPS port. As the director of the company's software ecosystem department, I have been working with GCC and contributed code to the upstream repository since 2021. In September 2021, I was given write access to the repository:

https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git&a=search&h=HEAD&st=author&s=YunQiang+Su

Please let me know about your thoughts on this proposal.

Best Regards,
YunQiang Su

Re: Taking Over MIPS Maintenance

[Richard Sandiford]

YunQiang Su <yunqiang.su@cipunited.com> writes:
> Greetings all,
>
> I would like to self-nominate as the new GCC MIPS maintainer. Matthew Fortune is listed in MAINTAINERS as the current maintainer of GCC's MIPS Port. However, it has been years since he left MIPS Technologies and had since been inactive.
>
> I currently work for CIP United Inc., which is the exclusive licensor and operator of MIPS IPs in China, Hong Kong, and Macau. Part of our operations include maintaining open source software solutions for MIPS and we are looking to continue maintaining GCC's MIPS port. As the director of the company's software ecosystem department, I have been working with GCC and contributed code to the upstream repository since 2021. In September 2021, I was given write access to the repository:
>
> https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git&a=search&h=HEAD&st=author&s=YunQiang+Su
>
> Please let me know about your thoughts on this proposal.

FWIW, I'd support this.  The MIPS port has been unmaintained for
many years now.  As the previous maintainer before Matthew, I've
tried to cover the area a bit.  But

(a) It's now close to 15 years since I did any meaningful MIPS work,
    so I've forgotten a great deal.

(b) Most new work will be specific to MIPSr6, which I have never used.

(c) It's been very difficult to find the time.

It would be more usual to wait a bit longer until someone becomes
maintainer.  But IMO that's only sensible when there's an existing
maintainer to cover the interim.

Thanks,
Richard

Re: Taking Over MIPS Maintenance

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Thu, 18 May 2023, Richard Sandiford via Gcc wrote:

> It would be more usual to wait a bit longer until someone becomes
> maintainer.  But IMO that's only sensible when there's an existing
> maintainer to cover the interim.

 Not questioning YunQiang's overall coding skills I'd be concerned about 
following the GNU Coding Standards though, as based on his submissions so 
far I'm not convinced of his experience in this area.  I would expect a 
maintainer to meet the highest standards here.

 I have a feeling our overall quality verification has become sloppier 
recently and I do wish all the maintainers were as meticulous as you were 
when reviewing my MIPS patches years if not decades ago.  I do hope it 
wasn't just because you considered me so good as to be able to adhere to 
the high standards while for other people we just have to accept what we 
have been offered.

 NB I'll do the MIPS16e2 feature review myself, exceptionally, as I was a 
member of the team developing this ISA extension and also did the binutils 
part, so I feel somewhat responsible for it and want GCC support for it to 
meet the usual quality standard GNU software has built its reputation on.

  Maciej