From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758043Ab3GMBbQ (ORCPT ); Fri, 12 Jul 2013 21:31:16 -0400 Received: from mail.linuxfoundation.org ([140.211.169.12]:56178 "EHLO mail.linuxfoundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1757984Ab3GMBbO (ORCPT ); Fri, 12 Jul 2013 21:31:14 -0400 Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 18:32:11 -0700 From: Greg Kroah-Hartman To: "Rafael J. Wysocki" Cc: ksummit-2013-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org, "John W. Linville" , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, stable@vger.kernel.org, ksummit-2013-discuss@lists.linux-foundation.org, torvalds@linux-foundation.org Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2013-discuss] When to push bug fixes to mainline Message-ID: <20130713013211.GA22726@kroah.com> References: <20130711214830.611455274@linuxfoundation.org> <20130712025745.GA24086@tuxdriver.com> <20130712033430.GA3798@kroah.com> <2354417.lhslZaMQMB@vostro.rjw.lan> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <2354417.lhslZaMQMB@vostro.rjw.lan> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sat, Jul 13, 2013 at 02:24:07AM +0200, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote: > On Thursday, July 11, 2013 08:34:30 PM Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote: > > On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 10:57:46PM -0400, John W. Linville wrote: > > > On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 08:50:23PM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > > > > > > > In any case, I've been very conservative in _not_ pushing bug fixes to > > > > Linus after -rc3 (unless they are fixing a regression or the bug fix > > > > is super-serious); I'd much rather have them cook in the ext4 tree > > > > where they can get a lot more testing (a full regression test run for > > > > ext4 takes over 24 hours), and for people trying out linux-next. > > > > > > > > Maybe the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of holding back > > > > changes and trying to avoid the risk of introducing regressions; > > > > perhaps this would be a good topic to discuss at the Kernel Summit. > > > > > > Yes, there does seem to be a certain ebb and flow as to how strict > > > the rules are about what should go into stable, what fixes are "good > > > enough" for a given -rc, how tight those rule are in -rc2 vs in -rc6, > > > etc. If nothing else, a good repetitive flogging and a restatement of > > > the One True Way to handle these things might be worthwhile once again... > > > > The rules are documented in stable_kernel_rules.txt for what I will > > accept. > > > > I have been beating on maintainers for 8 years now to actually mark > > patches for stable, and only this past year have I finally seen people > > do it (we FINALLY got SCSI patches marked for stable in this merge > > window!!!) So now that maintainers are finally realizing that they need > > to mark patches, I'll be pushing back harder on the patches that they do > > submit, because the distros are rightfully pushing back on me for > > accepting things that are outside of the stable_kernel_rules.txt > > guidelines. > > I don't quite understand why they are pushing back on you rather than on > the maintainers who have marked the commits they have problems with for > -stable. Why are you supposed to play the role of the gatekeeper here? > Can't maintainers be held responsible for the commits they mark for -stable in > the same way as they are responsible for the commits they push to Linus? Because I'm an easy big target and people are lazy. > Also, I don't really think that the distros have problems with fixes that are > simple and provably correct, even though the problems they fix don't seem to be > "serious enough" for -stable. They rather have problems with subtle changes > whose impact is difficult to estimate by inspection and you're not going to be > pushing back on those anyway (exactly because their impact is difficult to > estimate). I know that, you know that, but managers who see tons of kernel patches just get scared :) > > If you look on the stable@vger list, I've already rejected 3 today and > > asked about the huge 21 powerpc patches. Sure, it's not a lot, when > > staring down 174 more to go, but it's a start... > > And 2 of those 3 rejected were mine and for 1 of them I actually had a very > specific reason to mark it for -stable as I told you: It fixed a breakage > introduced inadvertently in 3.10 and I thought it would be good to reduce > the exposure of that breakage by fixing it in 3.10.1 as well as in 3.11-rc. There was no real breakage, that is why I rejected it. greg k-h