Re: linus-next: improving functional testing for to-be-merged pull requests

[Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>]

On 23.10.24 11:32, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> On 10/23/24 10:20, Steven Rostedt wrote:
>> To put it this way. The bugs I'm fixing was for code in linux-next
>> where the bugs were never found. They only appeared when they went into
>> Linus's tree. So why put the fixes in linux-next, if it didn't catch
>> the bugs I fixed in the first place?
> 
> The fix might be in a different part of the code, one that's stressed by
> -next testing even if the code with the original bug wasn't. So I don't
> think you can always assume that -next not catching the original bug means
> it can't catch a bug in the fix?

+1 to this and the "compile failures on obscure architectures or
configs" from Geert.

A -fixes branch in -next also makes a few things easier for regression
tracking:

* I only have to check *one* place instead of one or two hundred to see
if a regression fix is heading towards mainline or stuck somewhere.

* I can see if people accidentally queued regression fix for the current
or the next cycle when it should be the former (some subsystems make
this hard or impossible).

Ciao, Thorsten