Re: Proposal: Enhancing Commit Tagging for Stable Kernel Branches

[Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@linaro.org>]

On Tue, Jul 16, 2024 at 11:51:23AM -0300, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 14, 2024 at 03:20:48PM -0400, James Bottomley wrote:
> 
> > Here you seem to be assuming that every commit with a Fixes tag for a
> > prior release should be in stable ... I don't think that's true at all.
> 
> I think that is the main issue here. Having talked to enough people in
> the server/enterprise space there are a lot of different ideas about
> what should be backported into the various kernel forks out there.
> 
> Just looking at the patch meta data there is a spectrum of:
>    No-Fixes -> Fixes -> Fixes&Stable

(I've been looking at stable kernels for Linaro).

There are a few reasons to apply patches without Fixes tags.

1) Quite a few patches that should have Fixes tags don't.  For example
   syzbot stuff should always get a Fixes tag.
2) Sometimes we don't realize it's a fix until later.
3) Adding PCI IDs.
4) Other fixes depend on cleanups before they can be backported.
   For example, this patch:
   https://lore.kernel.org/all/20240429133832.9547-1-kabel@kernel.org/
   It's a one line fix.  But it's easier to apply if we apply it if we
   apply a couple other patches first.
   https://lore.kernel.org/all/20180319100523.24498-2-u.kleine-koenig@pengutronix.de/
   https://lore.kernel.org/all/20191105001301.27966-3-andrew@lunn.ch/
   The second patch doesn't do anything, but now the fix can be applied
   cleanly.

regards,
dan carpenter