Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] stable workflow

[Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>]

On Wed, Aug 03, 2016 at 12:36:29PM +0300, Jani Nikula wrote:
> On Wed, 03 Aug 2016, "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@rjwysocki.net> wrote:
> > On Tuesday, August 02, 2016 04:34:00 PM Mark Brown wrote:
> >> On Tue, Aug 02, 2016 at 05:12:47PM +0300, Jani Nikula wrote:
> >> 
> >> > Generally adding cc: stable is like, this is clearly a fix to a bug that
> >> > is present in stable kernels, and the bug should be fixed, but I have no
> >> > idea nor resources to review or test if this is the right fix across all
> >> > stable kernels. You end up relying on your gut feeling too much to be
> >> > comfortable. You have to make the call too early in the process.
> >> 
> >> I think the problems here are more in the process of how things go from
> >> being tagged stable to appearing in a stable release - the QA or lack
> >> thereof and so on.  While I do share some of your misgivings here I do
> >> also really like the fact that it's really easy for people to push
> >> things out for the attention of those working on backports.  It's
> >> essentially the same as the question I often find myself asking people
> >> who don't upstream - "why would this fix not benefit other users?".
> >
> > Agreed, and I think that's exactly where the expectations don't match what's
> > delivered in the long-term-stable trees.
> >
> > It should be made clear that "stable" doesn't mean "no regressions".  What
> > it reall means is "hey, if you care about backports, this is the stuff to take
> > into consideration in the first place".
> 
> I think this interpretation matches reality better than what
> Documentation/stable_kernel_rules.txt leads you to believe about adding
> cc: stable tag.

really?  Yes, we have regressions at times in stable kernels, but
really, our % is _very_ low.  Probably less than "normal" releases, but
that's just a random guess, it would be good for someone to try to do
research on this before guessing...

> However, I presume maintainers don't add cc: stable lightly, even when
> the fix could benefit stable kernel users, if there's any risk of the
> backport coming back to haunt you. I believe maintainers assume some
> degree of responsibility for the backport when they add cc: stable, even
> when they don't have the means to do QA. (And with the plethora of
> longterm kernels around these days, who does?)
> 
> But does being more liberal in adding cc: stable tags and shifting the
> responsibility for backports towards stable kernel maintainers work
> either? The bugs will anyway be reported to subsystem/driver
> maintainers, not stable maintainers.
> 
> Side note, I think it would be helpful to be allowed to revert clearly
> broken stable kernel backports even without an accompanying mainline
> revert. The original commit might be perfectly fine upstream, while the
> backport is bogus.

Since when do we reject such reverts?  I'd much rather fix something
properly, the way it was fixed in Linus's tree, as that is better off
for users, don't you agree?

thanks,

greg k-h