On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 01:26:35PM +0200, Greg KH wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 12:46:51AM -0400, Levin, Alexander wrote:
> >    - Improving tagging for stable. The "version tag" option is broken
> >    and the "Fixes:" tag is always preferable, how do we get people to
> >    use that more often? (script it somehow?
> >    scripts/find-version-it-fixes ?).
> 
> Oh a script like that would be nice, but how would that work in reality?

Not all Fixes: tags are suitable for stable though. I've been caught out
by patches being applied to stable (4.2 maybe) due to a Fixes tag,
without prerequisite patches being applied.

FWIW I have a git alias that blames a git diff or commit (I think based
on an old version of [1] with some fixes). That doesn't necessarily tell
you where a problem was introduced, but it sure can help if the problem
was introduced nearby the fix (and for fixup commits before a rebase).

Food for thought if nothing else.

E.g. 

$ git blame-show v4.8-rc2
commit 694d0d0bb2030d2e36df73e2d23d5770511dbc8d
Author:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
AuthorDate: Sun Aug 14 19:11:36 2016 -0700
Commit:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
CommitDate: Sun Aug 14 19:11:36 2016 -0700

    Linux 4.8-rc2

diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 8c504f324154..5c18baad7218 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
Blaming lines:   0% (7/1684), done.
Blaming lines:   0% (7/1684), done.
  c517d838eb7d0 (Linus Torvalds   VERSION = 4
  29b4817d4018d (Linus Torvalds   PATCHLEVEL = 8
  55922c9d1b84b (Linus Torvalds   SUBLEVEL = 0
- 29b4817d4018d (Linus Torvalds  -EXTRAVERSION = -rc1
+ 694d0d0bb2030 (Linus Torvalds  +EXTRAVERSION = -rc2
  1a695a905c185 (Linus Torvalds   NAME = Psychotic Stoned Sheep
  ^1da177e4c3f4 (Linus Torvalds   
  ^1da177e4c3f4 (Linus Torvalds   # *DOCUMENTATION*

Cheers
James

[1] https://github.com/dmnd/git-diff-blame/blob/master/git-diff-blame