Re: [PATCH AUTOSEL 4.9 09/26] net/mlx5e: Init ethtool steering for representors

[Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>]

On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 20:37:18 +0300 Leon Romanovsky wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 04:49:20PM +0100, Edward Cree wrote:
> > On 14/04/2020 16:16, Sasha Levin wrote:  
> > > Are you suggesting that a commit without a fixes tag is never a fix?  
> > Because fixes are much more likely than non-fixes to have a Fixes tag,
> >  the absence of a fixes tag is Bayesian evidence that a commit is not
> >  a fix.  It's of course not incontrovertible evidence, since (as you
> >  note) some fixes do not have a Fixes tag, but it does increase the
> >  amount of countervailing evidence needed to conclude a commit is a fix.
> > In this case it looks as if the only such evidence was that the commit
> >  message included the phrase "NULL pointer dereference".
> >  
> > > Fixes can (and should) come in during a merge window as well. They are
> > > not put on hold until the -rc releases.  
> > In networking-land, fixes generally go through David's 'net' tree, rather
> >  than 'net-next'; the only times a fix goes to net-next are when
> > a) the code it's fixing is only in net-next; i.e. it's a fix to a previous
> >  patch from the same merge window.  In this case the fix should not be
> >  backported, since the code it's fixing will not appear in stable kernels.
> > b) the code has changed enough between net and net-next that different
> >  fixes are appropriate for the two trees.  In this case, only the fix that
> >  went to 'net' should be backported (since it's the one that's appropriate
> >  for net, it's probably more appropriate for stable trees too); the fix
> >  that went to 'net-next' should not.
> > Or's original phrasing was that this patch "was pushed to net-next", which
> >  is not quite exactly the same thing as -next vs. -rc (though it's similar
> >  because of David's system of closing net-next for the duration of the
> >  merge window).  And this, again, is quite strong Bayesian evidence that
> >  the patch should not be selected for stable.
> >
> > To be honest, that this needs to be explained to you does not inspire
> >  confidence in the quality of your autoselection process...  
> 
> It is a little bit harsh to say that.
> 
> The autoselection process works good enough for everything outside
> of netdev community. The amount of bugs in those stable@ trees is
> not such high if you take into account the amount of fixes automatically
> brought in.
> 
> I think that all Fedora users are indirectly use those stable@ trees.

+1

I think folks how mark things for stable explicitly and carefully have
an obvious bias because they only see the false positives of auto-sel
and never the benefits.