From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: jwboyer@gmail.com In-Reply-To: <20160711170333.GE3890@thunk.org> References: <20160709000631.GB8989@io.lakedaemon.net> <1468024946.2390.21.camel@HansenPartnership.com> <20160709093626.GA6247@sirena.org.uk> <5781148F.1010102@roeck-us.net> <20160709212130.GC26097@thunk.org> <20160711151300.GB3701@sirena.org.uk> <20160711170333.GE3890@thunk.org> From: Josh Boyer Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2016 13:17:53 -0400 Message-ID: To: "Theodore Ts'o" Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Cc: James Bottomley , ksummit-discuss@lists.linux-foundation.org, Jason Cooper Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] stable workflow List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 1:03 PM, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 04:13:00PM +0100, Mark Brown wrote: >> On Sat, Jul 09, 2016 at 05:21:30PM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote: >> >> > the latest stable kernel. (But even if they do, apparently many >> > device vendors aren't bothering to merge in changes from the SOC's BSP >> > kernel, even if the BSP kernel is getting -stable updates.) >> >> It would be pretty irresponsible for device vendors to be merging BSP >> trees, they're generally development things with ongoing feature updates >> that might interact badly with things the system integrator has done >> rather than something stable enough to just merge constantly. > > So the question is who actually uses -stable kernels, and does it make > sense for it even to be managed in a git tree? A number of distributions use stable kernels. Fedora being one of them. Having the releases helps from both "what upstream are we using" and "convenient patch (patch-4.6.4.xz) to apply" standpoints. > Very few people will actually be merging them, and in fact maybe > having a patch queue which is checked into git might actually work > better, since it sounds like most people are just cherry-picking > specific patches. I think you need to be careful with generalities this early in the discussion. Thus far it's mostly people doing heavy development work on the kernel or for a specific platform that have chimed in. I would suggest that they aren't really the target of stable kernels. It is likely much more useful for distributions and end users. josh