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 ESMTP id 6D0B7988 for ; Sat, 31 May 2014 01:44:34 +0000 (UTC) Received: from szxga03-in.huawei.com (szxga03-in.huawei.com [119.145.14.66]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 861A4201D6 for ; Sat, 31 May 2014 01:44:33 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: <538933F1.4030009@huawei.com> Date: Sat, 31 May 2014 09:44:17 +0800 From: Li Zefan MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Theodore Ts'o" References: <1401294020.13546.95.camel@dhcp-9-2-203-236.watson.ibm.com> <20140528162833.GA23815@thin> <20140528233145.GA14933@cloud> <1401344001.27691.4.camel@dabdike> <20140529233459.GD11741@kroah.com> <1401423973.2163.26.camel@dabdike> <20140530050220.GA2505@kroah.com> <1401427998.2163.37.camel@dabdike> <20140530165646.GZ25041@thunk.org> In-Reply-To: <20140530165646.GZ25041@thunk.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: James Bottomley , "ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org" Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] More productive uses of enthusiastic new kernel developers List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On 2014/5/31 0:56, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > Thinking about this some more, what if instead of, or in addition to, > having newcomers work on cleanup patches, what if we encouraged some > of them to help to manually backport patches to the stable kernels > that don't apply automatically? > This is similar to my idea in "stable issues" to find a co-maintainer for Greg to do this work. While I sugguest to find a experienced and trustful person, you sugguest newcomers. I share the same concern with David, and I doubt newcompers are enthusiastic in doing backport for stable trees. > Currently the stable maintainers will typically send a notification > subsystem maintainer / mailing lists that a particular patch didn't > apply and that it's up some subsystem developers to handle resolving > the patch conflict. > > What if those patches were also cc'ed to a separate mailing list which > was also monitored by patchwork, and newcomers were encouraged to grab > patches and try to make a determination whether it's really needed, > and how to handle doing the backport, and once the patch was properly > backported they could cc the subsystem mailing list asking for > approval before the patch could get fed into a long-term stable tree? > > It does mean more patches to reviews, but I'd much rather review a > patch going into a long-term stable tree that would otherwise get > dropped (and thus avoid whiny entitled users and/or embedded engineers > who think it's the maintainer's job to backport to N different stable > kernels), rather than review whitespace patches. > > If this worked out, I could also imagine encouraging more advanced > newcomers to look for bug fix patches that didn't have an explicit cc: > stable@vger.kernel.org, and look to see if they should be backported. > This would help for certain subsystems that have elected not to > automatically mark their patches. There are subsystems which don't > like anyone but their experienced developers to handle doing > backports, but I suspect there would also be many subsystems that > would welcome the extra help, especially if it was much more likely to > result in additional reviewers / subsystem developers. >