Re: Proposal: Enhancing Commit Tagging for Stable Kernel Branches

[Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Mon, Jul 15, 2024 at 09:00:01AM -0600, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> writes:
> 
> > On Mon, Jul 15, 2024 at 04:34:19PM +0200, Alexandre Belloni wrote:
> >> 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.
> 
> I must confess I've been wondering about this, since I've seen the above
> policy expressed a number of times over the years.  Stable participation
> is entirely optional.  But then this conversation has included things
> like:
> 
> > All our documentation explicitly says that a stable tag is a *must*,
> > we've been nagging folks to add it when they haven't, and we give them
> > the spiel whenever we're asked why a certain fixes-only commit didn't
> > make it into the stable trees.
> 
> Sasha, https://lore.kernel.org/all/ZpQbQa-_8GkoiPhE@sashalap
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Greg, https://lore.kernel.org/all/2024071528-cahoots-reacquire-9eab@gregkh

I say this as many maintainers/developers get the "Fixes:" tag stuff
mixed up.  We had a very senior/core developer email us about this just
this weekend, they thought they were following the proper process and
didn't realize that "Cc: stable@" was the proper way instead.

That's what I mean, for people who _WANT_ to participate, they get it
wrong, as Linus points out, none of us read the documentation we have :(

> So, to me, the real question here is: what is the actual policy?  Are
> developers and maintainers expected to put in stable tags the way they
> are expected to add Signed-off-by, or is it a fully optional practice?
> In the latter case, I'm not sure how much good messing with the tags
> will do.

It's optional, but if you DO want to do it right, please cc: stable@ as
that's the documented way AND you will get proper integration into the
process (i.e. emails when things fail to apply.)  If you don't cc:
stable@ but do just use "Fixes:" and haven't told us otherwise (see my
previous email here), then us stable maintainers just have to guess and
try to apply "Fixes:" commits as they obviously are fixing real problems
that people have and report and want resolved.

thanks,

greg k-h