In recent times, the review cycle for stable releases have been changed. In particular, there is release candidate phase between ACKing patches and new stable release. Also, in case of failed submissions (fail to apply to stable tree), manual backport (Option 3) have to be submitted instead.
Update the release cycle documentation on stable-kernel-rules.rst to reflect the above.
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman gregkh@linuxfoundation.org Cc: Sasha Levin sashal@kernel.org Cc: Jonathan Corbet corbet@lwn.net Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Signed-off-by: Bagas Sanjaya bagasdotme@gmail.com --- Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.rst | 18 +++++++++++++++--- 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.rst b/Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.rst index d8ce4c0c775..c0c87d87f7d 100644 --- a/Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.rst +++ b/Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.rst @@ -139,6 +139,9 @@ Following the submission: days, according to the developer's schedules. - If accepted, the patch will be added to the -stable queue, for review by other developers and by the relevant subsystem maintainer. + - Some submitted patches may fail to apply to -stable tree. When this is the + case, the maintainer will reply to the sender requesting the backport. + If no backport is made, the submission will be ignored.
Review cycle @@ -147,13 +150,22 @@ Review cycle - When the -stable maintainers decide for a review cycle, the patches will be sent to the review committee, and the maintainer of the affected area of the patch (unless the submitter is the maintainer of the area) and CC: to - the linux-kernel mailing list. + the linux-kernel mailing list. Patches are prefixed with either ``[PATCH + AUTOSEL]`` (for automatically selected patches) or ``[PATCH MANUALSEL]`` + for manually backported patches. - The review committee has 48 hours in which to ACK or NAK the patch. - If the patch is rejected by a member of the committee, or linux-kernel members object to the patch, bringing up issues that the maintainers and members did not realize, the patch will be dropped from the queue. - - At the end of the review cycle, the ACKed patches will be added to the - latest -stable release, and a new -stable release will happen. + - The ACKed patches will be posted again as part of release candidate (-rc) + to be tested by developers and users willing to test (testers). When + testing all went OK, they can give Tested-by: tag for the -rc. Usually + only one -rc release is made, however if there are any outstanding + issues, some patches may be modified or dropped or additional patches may + be queued. Additional -rc releases are then released and tested until no + issues are found. + - At the end of the review cycle, the new -stable release will be released + containing all the queued and tested patches. - Security patches will be accepted into the -stable tree directly from the security kernel team, and not go through the normal review cycle. Contact the kernel security team for more details on this procedure.