Re: Proposal: Enhancing Commit Tagging for Stable Kernel Branches

[Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Mon, Jul 15, 2024 at 04:34:19PM +0200, Alexandre Belloni wrote:
> 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.

Totally true.  The first rule of the stable tree is "it will not put
additional burden on any developer or maintainer that doesn't want to
participate in it."  So if you don't want to deal with it, wonderful,
don't take anything and just don't worry about it.

Many subsystems have also opted-out of the autosel and Fixes: merges as
they don't want that to happen for them.  We gladly support that, anyone
can just email us and we will add them to the list, or they can send a
patch to:
	https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git/tree/ignore_list

Again, we do NOT want to penalize anyone here, that's not how kernel
development should work, our maintainers are overworked as it is.

thanks,

greg k-h