Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] stable kernel process automation and improvement

[Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>]

On Fri, 05 Jul 2019 15:54:11 +0200,
Michael Ellerman wrote:
> 
> Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org> writes:
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > If there is interest, I'd like to go over the (minor) changes that went
> > into the -stable kernel process since last year's MS, the various
> > automations we now have, and how we have addressed some of the pain
> > points that came up last year. I'd also love to hear from folks about
> > the issues they're seeing with the process, and if there's anything we
> > can do to make it better.
> >
> > Some of the concerns that were raised during last year's MS (both in the
> > group session as well as in the hallway track) which we've tried to
> > address are:
> >
> >  - Commits missing because authors did not respond to Greg's "FAILED:"
> >    mails.
> >  - Concerns about how well -stable kernels are tested.
> >  - "Fixes for fixes" end up being missed.
> >  - Saner AUTOSEL process.
> >  - Tracking of dropped commits.
> 
> Yeah definitely interested in this.
> 
> Especially the tracking part. I have been trying to keep track of
> powerpc commits that need backporting, but haven't really come up with a
> good system. So would be interested in what you and/or others are doing.
> 
> Something I've been experimenting with is using git notes to mark
> commits that have been fixed by a subsequent commit. This gives you a
> two way link between the fix and the fixed commit, and you can get the
> notes to show up in git log, like:
> 
>   commit 1846193b178dcc58435fdc57352db7b74826ef37
>   Author: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
>   Date:   Thu Jul 7 22:54:29 2016 +1000
>   
>       powerpc/xmon: Dump ISA 2.06 SPRs
>       
>       Signed-off-by: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
>   
>   Notes (fixed):
>       Fixed-by: c47a94031e81 ("powerpc/xmon: Fix display of SPRs")
> 
> 
> I'd like to extend this to the stable trees, so you could have output
> something like:
> 
>   commit 1846193b178dcc58435fdc57352db7b74826ef37
>   Author: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
>   Date:   Thu Jul 7 22:54:29 2016 +1000
>   
>       powerpc/xmon: Dump ISA 2.06 SPRs
>       
>       Signed-off-by: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
>   
>   Notes (fixed):
>       Fixed-by: c47a94031e81 ("powerpc/xmon: Fix display of SPRs")
>         v4.9.y: deadbeef0000 ("powerpc/xmon: Fix display of SPRs")
>        v4.10.y: not found
> 
> 
> Git notes are also just blobs, so in theory the processing to generate
> those notes could be done once and pushed to a repo where everyone could
> pull them.

Yes, I'd love to have (and share) this kind of reverse mapping
information.  But somehow using git-notes for such a purpose wasn't
accepted widely.  IIRC, Linus mentioned that git-notes is a hack, and
indeed it is.  But if the entries aren't too big, it would work well
enough, I guess.  Once when the size matters, we can reconsider to
switch to a better infrastructure...

FWIW, SUSE tracks the possible upstream fixes by parsing Fixes tag
regularly, so it's proven to be useful.


thanks,

Takashi