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 ESMTPS id 98C6E83D for ; Thu, 4 Aug 2016 13:48:56 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-it0-f65.google.com (mail-it0-f65.google.com [209.85.214.65]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id EED52135 for ; Thu, 4 Aug 2016 13:48:55 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-it0-f65.google.com with SMTP id j124so20008869ith.3 for ; Thu, 04 Aug 2016 06:48:55 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: geert.uytterhoeven@gmail.com In-Reply-To: <1470232658.2482.42.camel@HansenPartnership.com> References: <871t27s1i8.fsf@intel.com> <20160802153400.GD10376@sirena.org.uk> <3268954.rXb0BJAX6c@vostro.rjw.lan> <87oa5aqjmq.fsf@intel.com> <20160803110935.GA26270@kroah.com> <87a8guq9y8.fsf@intel.com> <20160803132607.GA31662@kroah.com> <1470232658.2482.42.camel@HansenPartnership.com> From: Geert Uytterhoeven Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2016 15:48:54 +0200 Message-ID: To: James Bottomley Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Cc: "ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org" , Trond Myklebust Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] stable workflow List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On Wed, Aug 3, 2016 at 3:57 PM, James Bottomley wrote: > On Wed, 2016-08-03 at 15:48 +0200, Jiri Kosina wrote: >> On Wed, 3 Aug 2016, Greg KH wrote: >> > Real examples from now on please, if there are problems in the >> > stable workflow that we have today, everyone needs to show it with >> > examples, I'm tired of seeing mental gymnastics around stable >> > kernels just because it is "fun". >> >> Let me pick an example I personally had a lot of issues quite some >> time ago: >> >> https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/4/22/259 >> >> This was a patch that got added to -stable to fix a problem that >> didn't exist there. It caused system bustage almost immediately, >> which indicates that very limited testing has been done prior to >> releasing the patch. >> >> I believe that patches like this should really be caught during >> -stable review; anyone familiar with the VFS code and actually >> looking at the patch would notice immediately that it's fixing a bug >> that doesn't exist in the code at all in the first place; that seems >> to indicate that noone has actually explicitly reviewed it for >> -stable, and therefore it's questionable whether it should have been >> applied. > > This isn't a viable approach. Firstly stable review is less thorough > than upstream review because the review mostly goes "yes, I already > reviewed this in upstream". Secondly, if the upstream review didn't > catch the problems why would we suddenly catch them in a stable review? Stable review is useful exactly for this. There have been a few occurrences where I did reply "no, you must not backport this patch to that stable version" during stable reviews. Gr{oetje,eeting}s, Geert -- Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that. -- Linus Torvalds