From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (smtp1.linux-foundation.org [172.17.192.35]) by mail.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 0888FE71 for ; Mon, 10 Sep 2018 15:55:58 +0000 (UTC) Received: from NAM04-BN3-obe.outbound.protection.outlook.com (mail-eopbgr680133.outbound.protection.outlook.com [40.107.68.133]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 43E0771C for ; Mon, 10 Sep 2018 15:55:57 +0000 (UTC) From: Sasha Levin To: James Bottomley Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2018 15:55:54 +0000 Message-ID: <20180910155551.GS16300@sasha-vm> References: <1536592110.4035.5.camel@HansenPartnership.com> <20180910153806.GR16300@sasha-vm> <1536594427.4035.14.camel@HansenPartnership.com> In-Reply-To: <1536594427.4035.14.camel@HansenPartnership.com> Content-Language: en-US Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-ID: <0DA38AFB67D64448B98A39E6BB6DAA7F@namprd21.prod.outlook.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable MIME-Version: 1.0 Cc: ksummit Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINER SUMMIT] community management/subsystem governance List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 08:47:07AM -0700, James Bottomley wrote: >On Mon, 2018-09-10 at 15:38 +0000, Sasha Levin via Ksummit-discuss >wrote: >> On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 05:10:48AM -1000, Linus Torvalds wrote: >> > On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 5:08 AM James Bottomley >> > wrote: >> > > >> > > On Mon, 2018-09-10 at 04:53 -1000, Linus Torvalds wrote: >> > > > =A0 "Live without email - possible?" >> > > >> > > Can I propose one small alteration to the topic: >> > > >> > > =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0"Patches without Email - Possible?" >> > >> > Yes, better. That's what I meant anyway. >> > >> > I still want the pull requests as email, and I still think email is >> > often the best way to discuss things. >> >> Yes, email is great for discussions, but one concern I have is that >> once discussions ended and a patch was merged, a lot of those >> discussions are lost forever. >> >> It's somewhat easy to google a patch and look in lkml archives to see >> some discussion as a result of the patch, but that's far from >> perfect: >> >> 1. For different patch revisions, some discussions manage to hide in >> the archives. >> 2. Discussions that resulted in a patch being sent aren't linked to >> the patch itself. >> 3. Any discussions after the patch was merged aren't easy to locate, >> specially if they're not in the same thread as the original patch. >> >> This makes the lives of stable/distro folks more difficult than it >> should be. > >I disagree on this. I have had occasion, when identifying patches that >screwed something up, to go back to the emails to try to find out who >did this and why. As long as you're used to search interfaces it's >usually easy to find. Usually they are all threaded under the patch >but the worst case I've seen is when v1, v2 ... vn aren't linked by >thread, but even there searching for the specific patch set (0/n) >subject title works. So I think the data is all there in multiple >archives and we do have powerful enough tools to find it. Indeed, if *all* discussions happened in a single thread that was used to submit the patch then sure - it's straightforward. However, consider 2 scenarios that we encounter on a weekly basis: 1. We see a stable patch but not sure why/how it fixes an issue. The patch itself doesn't have enough information and there was no discussion after the patch was submitted. However, there was a lot of discussion in a completely unrelated thread unlinked from the patch submission. We can't find that because it doesn't refer to the patch at all, it just describes the problem and a solution. 2. We pull in a patch into the stable tree, but a few days later someone reports a bug and points to that patch. It's easier to solve these cases by grepping through mailboxes before shipping out stable releases, but it adds a considerable amount of effort. -- Thanks, Sasha=