Re: Proposal: Enhancing Commit Tagging for Stable Kernel Branches

[Alexandre Belloni <alexandre.belloni@bootlin.com>]

On 15/07/2024 08:52:54-0400, Mimi Zohar wrote:
> On Mon, 2024-07-15 at 08:48 -0400, Mimi Zohar wrote:
> > On Mon, 2024-07-15 at 10:02 +0200, Greg KH wrote:
> > > On Sun, Jul 14, 2024 at 04:09:06PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > > > On Sun, 14 Jul 2024 at 16:06, James Bottomley
> > > > <James.Bottomley@hansenpartnership.com> wrote:
> > > > > But we know how to enforce a unified view of process: we document it in
> > > > > Documentaion/process ...
> > > > 
> > > > Hahhahhahaahh.
> > > > 
> > > > Ahh, you're such a kidder, James.
> > > 
> > > Yeah, and that's the issue here, we have whole subsystems and many many
> > > maintainers and developers that do not follow this at all, hence our
> > > need to pull into stable commits that only have a "Fixes:" tag on it.
> > > 
> > > Now we can start running a bot on all submissions that says something
> > > like the one that I have been doing for the USB subsystem for the past
> > > few months, here's the text I use:
> > > 
> > > 	- You have marked a patch with a "Fixes:" tag for a commit that is in an
> > > 	  older released kernel, yet you do not have a cc: stable line in the
> > > 	  signed-off-by area at all, which means that the patch will not be
> > > 	  applied to any older kernel releases.  To properly fix this, please
> > > 	  follow the documented rules in the
> > > 	  Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.rst file for how to resolve
> > > 	  this.
> > > 
> > > But I doubt everyone wants to see that polute their mailing lists :(
> > > 
> > > Anyway, if people want to stick to the current, documented, process,
> > > great, but as-is, trying to get people to follow that is rough and not
> > > really working.
> > 
> > Sigh, I'm one of them, but I'd like to move to backporting "stable" only.
> > Unfortunately, the more that you backport "Fixes:" the less likely maintainers
> > (me) will remember to Cc stable.  Other than email, is there a way of letting
> > you and Sasha know to only backport those with "Stable"?.  Instead of sending
> > the email above to everyone, only send it maintainers who don't Cc stable
> > properly/haven't notified you that they will.  The emails should get everyone
> > else's attention. :)
> 
> Basically, reward good behavior, penalize bad behavior.

I'm very surprised that it didn't cross anyone's mind yet that
contributors and maintainers don't bother using Cc: stable because they
don't care about stable for various reasons. So the behaviour is nether
good nor bad and doesn't have to be penalized.


-- 
Alexandre Belloni, co-owner and COO, Bootlin
Embedded Linux and Kernel engineering
https://bootlin.com