From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: [PULLv2] vhost: cleanups and fixes Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 13:26:41 -0700 Message-ID: References: <20130502201106.GA17385@redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Cc: KVM list , virtualization@lists.osdl.org, Network Development , Linux Kernel Mailing List , Asias He , "Nicholas A. Bellinger" To: "Michael S. Tsirkin" Return-path: Received: from mail-vb0-f51.google.com ([209.85.212.51]:62204 "EHLO mail-vb0-f51.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1758644Ab3EBU0m (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 May 2013 16:26:42 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20130502201106.GA17385@redhat.com> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 1:11 PM, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote: > Hi Linus, > This is exactly same code as my previous pull sent earlier, the diffstat > was wrong however, I did a merge with master which fixed that. See my other email. THIS IS NOT A VALID REASON TO DO A BACK-MERGE! Extraneous merge commits that have no actual reason for development are bad. They make it much harder to see what the actual development thread was, because they mix up different branches. In fact, the whole problem with the diffstat started with *another* extraneous merge, so the "fix" was a result of a previous merge. This is exactly the kind of reason why we want merges to be done by upstream developers, not "back-merges" by downstream. Now that merge is in your development tree, and if/when you start doing development on top of that, the same kind of problem will continue. Together with making it much harder to see in the history what _your_ development stream was, because now it's no longer linear and mixes in random points of the merge window. Don't do this. Why do I have to write one of these "DON'T DO BACK-MERGES" every single merge window? I really wish people listened, instead of every single developer deciding that "it's ok if _I_ do it, I'm sure Linus is complaining about all those *other* morons out there". When I say "don't do back-merges", I mean *you*. Yes, you. Not somebody else. You. Linus