Re: Proposal: Enhancing Commit Tagging for Stable Kernel Branches

[Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>]

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

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.

Thanks,

jon