Re: Proposal: Enhancing Commit Tagging for Stable Kernel Branches

[Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>]

On Sun, Jul 14, 2024 at 10:07:48AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>On Sun, 14 Jul 2024 at 05:31, Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org> wrote:
>>
>> One of the main issues is that most Fixes-tagged commits (>80%) end up
>> in a stable tree, leading some authors to omit the Stable tag
>> altogether.
>
>So as others have said, the fix to two confusing tags is not to
>introduce *more* tags. That only adds to the confusion.
>
>I honestly personally will likely not ever use any more tags than the
>ones we already have. Every single "let's add a new tag" proposal I've
>ever seen has been pure garbage.
>
>People see one problem and want to fix it by introducing a tag, and
>think tags magically would fix it, when adding more tags will only
>cause more confusion and make the existing tags less obvious.

I'm not trying to add an additional tag, but rather replace a "broken"
tag by adding something that is better aligned with how people are doing
things these days.

For that matter, we can look at Linus Torvalds, a prominent Linux
developer. In the past few years, Linus has authored:

  - 2023: 3 stable tagged commits.
  - 2022: 2 stable tagged commits.
  - 2021: 4 stable tagged commits.
  - 2020: 0 stable tagged commits.

If we all agree that Linus authored more stable-worthy commits than
that, then to me it's an indication that the stable tagging system isn't
working well here.

My thinking was that we can stop nagging folks about adding a stable tag
and leverage their current (positive) behavior around adding fixes tags,
but yes - training folks to use a new tag is hard.

What's the path forward here? Stable tags don't work, "Improves:" tag
might indeed be garbage, so what would make the folks who read this
mailing list more consistent about tagging patches they author for
backport?

-- 
Thanks,
Sasha