From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932441AbbDHXNI (ORCPT ); Wed, 8 Apr 2015 19:13:08 -0400 Received: from v094114.home.net.pl ([79.96.170.134]:65002 "HELO v094114.home.net.pl" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S932308AbbDHXND (ORCPT ); Wed, 8 Apr 2015 19:13:03 -0400 From: "Rafael J. Wysocki" To: Steven Rostedt Cc: Peter Zijlstra , Richard Weinberger , Greg Kroah-Hartman , Ingo Molnar , Joe Perches , LKML , Ingo Molnar , Linus Torvalds , Thomas Gleixner , "H. Peter Anvin" Subject: Re: about the flood of trivial patches and the Code of Conduct (was: Re: [PATCH 19/25] sched: Use bool function return values of true/false not 1/0) Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2015 01:37:26 +0200 Message-ID: <3681763.iLyH4xMfmO@vostro.rjw.lan> User-Agent: KMail/4.11.5 (Linux/3.19.0+; KDE/4.11.5; x86_64; ; ) In-Reply-To: <20150407132803.GB6801@home.goodmis.org> References: <1835148.WK9y2EKkR9@vostro.rjw.lan> <20150407132803.GB6801@home.goodmis.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tuesday, April 07, 2015 09:28:03 AM Steven Rostedt wrote: > On Tue, Apr 07, 2015 at 02:31:23PM +0200, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote: > > > > > > As per the other branch of this tree; an emphatic NO to that. The > > > trivial tree is not a backdoor to bypass maintainers. Actual code > > > changes do not get to go through any tree but the maintainer tree unless > > > explicitly ACKed. > > > > Well, practically speaking, that would make changes like the recent > > clockevents_notify() removal very difficult to carry out. Also there is > > some natural cross-talk between certain subsystems. > > I would not call the clockevents_notify() series "trivial". More advanced > clean ups that are system wide, would be different, because you are changing > the way the code works. The maintainers must be Cc'd, but sometimes I find > those changes are very hard to get acks from everyone. But again, the change > is a non trivial clean up and has other reasons for going in than just to > make the code look nice. > > > > > Different matter is the real value of tree-wide cleanup changes. If code is > > old enough it often is better to leave it alone, even though it may be doing > > things that we don't usually do nowadays. > > Or maybe it's a good time to rewrite that code such that everyone can understand > it today ;-) > > > > > Or things that new patches are not supposed to do, for that matter, so > > I generally don't like the "checkpatch.pl error fix" changes in the old code. > > > > I totally agree with that. But for non trivial clean ups, old code should be > updated too. Well, there still is some risk of introducing real bugs this way (I *have* seen "trivial cleanups" that broke things) and is it really worth it? Besides, old code is somewhat like an ancient building. Yes, it needs to be kept in a good shape, but you won't replace bricks in it just because they are old, will you? Rafael