From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from smtp.kernel.org (aws-us-west-2-korg-mail-1.web.codeaurora.org [10.30.226.201]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 479E672622 for ; Thu, 16 Oct 2025 06:57:26 +0000 (UTC) Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; arc=none smtp.client-ip=10.30.226.201 ARC-Seal:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1760597847; cv=none; b=nUEVjBmDZPwjpzdPdOE8Rq1qQrYioE02KgOSMk01EfA64p7eHY/XSQrruRHq5ivU/rrBQfbiFzva1gWCgMMGzOBVjm54B93Xl25Mj0UAzR83IhtpR30Dw/+Iuxm/ya9csHxOlSl0qRpwSCxA/YgunlnlJXDVD7MEqRUC6iR5Pus= ARC-Message-Signature:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1760597847; c=relaxed/simple; bh=YRIJugu9rNbxZ0adHLi1LC/o38quEWg0jqasRijHCsU=; h=Date:From:To:Cc:Subject:Message-ID:References:MIME-Version: Content-Type:Content-Disposition:In-Reply-To; b=uzOyxCjImWvJY2QIxMDT7u9nGqkB1Pk/1qhT+tnEaRRREBiUf1uQFcchPnLS22kK9brUDVBymSASPffpj127HgGnQxOMY89xUh+wm25ceUJGnegETU1nX/0Lka+JpvY/RJMmJPRXTSLF+Qat65CJ+tsRC49ZoQy/Ke1WbEmsVCI= ARC-Authentication-Results:i=1; smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dkim=pass (1024-bit key) header.d=linuxfoundation.org header.i=@linuxfoundation.org header.b=bIfY/IOh; arc=none smtp.client-ip=10.30.226.201 Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dkim=pass (1024-bit key) header.d=linuxfoundation.org header.i=@linuxfoundation.org header.b="bIfY/IOh" Received: by smtp.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 5CAD5C4CEF1; Thu, 16 Oct 2025 06:57:26 +0000 (UTC) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/simple; d=linuxfoundation.org; s=korg; t=1760597846; bh=YRIJugu9rNbxZ0adHLi1LC/o38quEWg0jqasRijHCsU=; h=Date:From:To:Cc:Subject:References:In-Reply-To:From; b=bIfY/IOhNNa5pTmYt6y2mv10XHjV9OIxqlhG48qnPgU2eFTcIIJO8Hc7fmXkhZucP YGmEQGVRfoXNBebb1Af0Lby9DT/zyKLBJ5/C0GU90JzVpAOkdS4mYDQSCHkiZvU944 UabCPGjYkVKYNWuJnjolpAYhSrvyP8mToQBPMRWs= Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2025 08:57:23 +0200 From: Greg KH To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Konstantin Ryabitsev , dan.j.williams@intel.com, Doug Anderson , James Bottomley , "ksummit@lists.linux.dev" Subject: Re: Replacing Link trailers Message-ID: <2025101631-foyer-wages-8458@gregkh> References: <68ee73dcd10ee_2f89910075@dwillia2-mobl4.notmuch> <2025101448-overtake-mortality-99c8@gregkh> <68efd54da845e_2f89910071@dwillia2-mobl4.notmuch> <20251015-versed-active-silkworm-bb87bd@lemur> Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: ksummit@lists.linux.dev List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: On Wed, Oct 15, 2025 at 12:17:27PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: > On Wed, 15 Oct 2025 at 12:15, Linus Torvalds > wrote: > > > > (The above script is "tested" in that I verified that yes > > .. premature 'hit send' situation. That should have said > > ..that yes] I verified that it superficially works, but didn't do > anything exhaustive. > > It was obviously meant as a "look, you can do things like this", not > as a real fully fleshed out solution. So, to summarize all of this, you are suggesting that maintainers: - don't automatically include Link: tags when they don't touch a patch and apply it directly from the email as `b4 dig` will be able to find the patch. - if a maintainer does change a patch, add the Link: tag so that people can find the original patch when looking it up later. Is that correct? If so, ugh, that just raised the workload of all of us maintainers as now we have to remember to do that second step manually (or through the new git hook, which will NOT work without a network connection so no applying patches from planes or trains). It also puts a burden on the "normal" person here, who took the time to bisect a kernel bug, found a git commit and then needs to know who to email about the thing. That simple, dumb, extra, "Link:" tag provided that context for them to be able to do that, and no user is going to want to have to go install b4 to be able to figure that out. I predict that maintainers are just going to drop the Link tag and not remember to manually add it back, when touching patches, as that increased their already-limited workload (and again, prevents from applying patches without a good network connection). And overall, that's going to be a loss in our source history for people trying to track down problems with changes in there. The LF, many years ago, funded a tool to go and try to track all commits back to the email that they came from, and it was a pain to do, and it almost worked, but no one ever really used it. But that little Link: tag, _finally_ added by a huge majority of maintainers, made it dirt simple for everyone to accurately track back the source of changes and restart conversations trivially about bugs and issues found by users. While I appreciate the goal of keeping our changelogs "crap free", I still think that the "mindless Link: line" benefits far outweigh the lack of it being there, and forcing us to use additional tools and server resources, when doing our debugging and patch history tracing work, which almost all users of the kernel source tree end up doing. That single line is there for when we don't realize we are going to need it in the future, think of it as an insurance tax. It's saved me tons of hours of time already in doing stable kernel work over the years, and I'm sure it has helped others out as well, as I'm not alone in doing backporting work to old codebases. I'll miss it. thanks, greg k-h