From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S934254AbYB2Wma (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:42:30 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932273AbYB2WmU (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:42:20 -0500 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([66.187.233.31]:53427 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932330AbYB2WmT (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:42:19 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Roland McGrath To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Ingo Molnar , Andrew Morton , Thomas Gleixner , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] x86_64 ia32 syscall restart fix In-Reply-To: Linus Torvalds's message of Friday, 29 February 2008 08:26:14 -0800 X-Fcc: ~/Mail/linus References: <20080229035707.EAE862700FD@magilla.localdomain> <20080229155207.GC27248@elte.hu> Emacs: if SIGINT doesn't work, try a tranquilizer. Message-Id: <20080229224212.24A532700FE@magilla.localdomain> Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:42:12 -0800 (PST) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org And here I thought I was so good for using coherent English sentences with proper punctuation and capitalization, not to mention actually explaining the issues of the change. I must admit I've been a little bewildered in the past when Ingo has changed my log entries to be ungrammatical, eschew standard punctuation, and with an apparent vendetta on the shift key, not to mention sometimes removed half the relevant technical detail to boot. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at being harangued for making my log entries too informative. People love to remove clauses out of the middle of my code comments too--so they can match the norm of run-on sentences, I guess. Most log entries I see are short. But they really don't explain the problem being fixed so I know enough about it without digging out some long mailing list threads. If that's your preference, then I guess we'll just have to keep having Ingo remove the text I write. At least it will be in the archives from my posting. (Reading it is the only way I'll remember myself what details mattered, after a week has gone by.) If what you want is formulaic log text that always puts blank lines in between bug description, change description, and change justification, I can do that. If there is any place that documents the conventions you want in log entries, I've overlooked it. As Ingo alluded to, most of the time my number one focus is to record all the important facts and decisions before I go back to something else or knock off for the night. I hate nothing more than looking at an old change of mine and not being able to figure out what some of the logic behind it was. If there's one thing I can rely on, it's that I'll forget what I knew the first time until I spend hours the second time recapitulating the same debugging to find out that I may have had some sense after all six months back. Anyway, if the worst push-back on my submissions is a handful of foreigners telling me how to write English, then I guess things are ... as they should be. ;-) As to the question of tagging for backports, I am not really clear on what the intended criteria are. Take this bug for example. It is a consistent behavior that has existed since the dawn of time (I've only actually checked back to 2.6.9). It's wrong, but can't be a surprise on any system based on a stable release. It's a regression of the 64-bit kernel vs the native 32-bit kernel, but not a version-to-version regression. The fix is straightforward to backport and has very low risk. How does all that translate into whether a given stable version wants a backport or not? Thanks, Roland