Re: [PATCH v3 00/10] sysctl: Remove sentinel elements from kernel dir

From: Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org>
To: Krzysztof Kozlowski <krzk@kernel.org>
Cc: Konrad Dybcio <konrad.dybcio@linaro.org>,
	 Joel Granados <j.granados@samsung.com>,
	Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>,
	josh@joshtriplett.org,  Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>,
	Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>,
	 Iurii Zaikin <yzaikin@google.com>,
	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>,
	 Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@kernel.org>,
	Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>,
	 Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
	John Stultz <jstultz@google.com>,
	 Stephen Boyd <sboyd@kernel.org>,
	Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>,
	 Will Drewry <wad@chromium.org>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>,
	 Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
	Juri Lelli <juri.lelli@redhat.com>,
	 Vincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@linaro.org>,
	Dietmar Eggemann <dietmar.eggemann@arm.com>,
	 Ben Segall <bsegall@google.com>, Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>,
	 Daniel Bristot de Oliveira <bristot@redhat.com>,
	Valentin Schneider <vschneid@redhat.com>,
	 Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>,
	John Ogness <john.ogness@linutronix.de>,
	 Sergey Senozhatsky <senozhatsky@chromium.org>,
	"Naveen N. Rao" <naveen.n.rao@linux.ibm.com>,
	 Anil S Keshavamurthy <anil.s.keshavamurthy@intel.com>,
	"David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>,
	 Balbir Singh <bsingharora@gmail.com>,
	Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>,
	 Daniel Borkmann <daniel@iogearbox.net>,
	John Fastabend <john.fastabend@gmail.com>,
	 Andrii Nakryiko <andrii@kernel.org>,
	Martin KaFai Lau <martin.lau@linux.dev>,
	 Song Liu <song@kernel.org>,
	Yonghong Song <yonghong.song@linux.dev>,
	 KP Singh <kpsingh@kernel.org>,
	Stanislav Fomichev <sdf@google.com>, Hao Luo <haoluo@google.com>,
	 Jiri Olsa <jolsa@kernel.org>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, kexec@lists.infradead.org,
	 linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-trace-kernel@vger.kernel.org, bpf@vger.kernel.org,
	 tools@kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 00/10] sysctl: Remove sentinel elements from kernel dir
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2024 10:57:23 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20240422-sensible-sambar-of-plenty-ae8afc@lemur> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <311c8b64-be13-4740-a659-3a14cf68774a@kernel.org>

On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 04:49:27PM +0200, Krzysztof Kozlowski wrote:
> >> These commits remove the sentinel element (last empty element) from 
> >> the
> >> sysctl arrays of all the files under the "kernel/" directory that use a
> >> sysctl array for registration. The merging of the preparation patches
> >> [1] to mainline allows us to remove sentinel elements without changing
> >> behavior. This is safe because the sysctl registration code
> >> (register_sysctl() and friends) use the array size in addition to
> >> checking for a sentinel [2].
> > 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > looks like *this* "patch" made it to the sysctl tree [1], breaking b4
> > for everyone else (as there's a "--- b4-submit-tracking ---" magic in
> > the tree history now) on next-20240422
> > 
> > Please drop it (again, I'm only talking about this empty cover letter).
> 
> Just to clarify, in case it is not obvious:
> Please *do not merge your own trees* into kernel.org repos. Instead use
> b4 shazam to pick up entire patchset, even if it is yours. b4 allows to
> merge/apply also the cover letter, if this is your intention.
> 
> With b4 shazam you would get proper Link tags and not break everyone's
> b4 workflow on next. :/

I was expecting this to happen at some point. :/

Note, that you can still use b4 and merge your own trees, but you need 
to switch to using a different cover letter strategy:

  [b4]
  prep-cover-strategy = branch-description

-K