From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (smtp1.linux-foundation.org [172.17.192.35]) by mail.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 9469478D for ; Wed, 3 Aug 2016 15:48:42 +0000 (UTC) Received: from bh-25.webhostbox.net (bh-25.webhostbox.net [208.91.199.152]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 1D54E26E for ; Wed, 3 Aug 2016 15:48:42 +0000 (UTC) To: Jiri Kosina , Greg KH References: <871t27s1i8.fsf@intel.com> <20160802153400.GD10376@sirena.org.uk> <3268954.rXb0BJAX6c@vostro.rjw.lan> <87oa5aqjmq.fsf@intel.com> <20160803110935.GA26270@kroah.com> <87a8guq9y8.fsf@intel.com> <20160803132607.GA31662@kroah.com> <20160803141937.GA9180@kroah.com> From: Guenter Roeck Message-ID: <57A21252.7000407@roeck-us.net> Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2016 08:48:34 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: James Bottomley , Trond Myklebust , ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] stable workflow List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On 08/03/2016 07:45 AM, Jiri Kosina wrote: > On Wed, 3 Aug 2016, Greg KH wrote: > >>> Has anything changed in the process that'd just make patches like this one >>> to be not merged these days? >> >> We have Guenter's test-bot that has helped out immensely here with this. > > That's very good to know, I admit that I have close to zero idea about how > the stable -rcs are being tested. > ... and when it doesn't work because I messed it up, we get issues such as 3.18 and 4.1 being broken for mips and sparc64 because a couple of patches which don't apply to those kernels were tagged with an unqualified Cc: stable and applied. So, if anything, the one problem I see with the current stable process is those unqualified stable tags. Maybe those should be deprecated; expecting stable maintainers to figure out if a patch applies to a given stable branch or not is a bit too much to ask for. With stable releases as far back as 3.2 (or 338,020 commits as of right now) it is almost guaranteed that a patch tagged with an unqualified Cc: stable doesn't apply to all branches. >> It seems most of these can all come down to "we need more testing", > > That as well, but the main message I am trying to push here is "we need a > little bit more thinking while anotating patches for stable". > > It might very well be that some variation of what has been just proposed > elsewhere in this thread (requiring all the stable commits to either > contain explicit 'Fixes' tag, or be explicitly annotated by the kernel > version range they should be applied to) would help tremendously on that > front. > >> [1] The people that are doing stable tree testing are doing a great job, >> Guenter, Shuah, kernelci, my build-bot, 0-day, etc. > Maybe I or someone else can give a 10-15 minute presentation about the current test efforts to bring everyone up to date on what is being tested and how. Maybe we should make such a presentation a regular event at major conferences. Guenter