Re: [GIT PULL] hotfixes for 6.1-rc2

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 9:33 PM Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
>
> Andrew Morton (3):
>       Merge branch 'master' into mm-hotfixes-stable
>       Merge branch 'master' into mm-hotfixes-stable

I've pulled this, but both of these merges look entirely invalid.

First off, one of them is most definitely pointless - there's no
activity between the first and the second merge, so that first merge
shouldn't have been done in the first place.

But the second merge is bad by definition too, in that it doesn't have
any explanation for it.

I've said this before - and I hope that some day I just won't have to
say it again - if you cannot explain a merge, you shouldn't be *doing*
a merge.

It really is that simple. If you have no clear explanation for why you
need to do that merge, then you simply shouldn't have done it.

For example, that first merge clearly CANNOT have a valid reason for
existing. There's simply no valid explanation for doing it,
considering that there was no work on top of it that could possibly be
a cause tor that merge.

So that whole "if you cannot explain why you do a merge, don't do the
merge" rule should have been a hard "NO" on it, and should have made
it obvious that it shouldn't have happened.

Please don't do pointless merges.

            Linus