On Wed, Jul 14, 2021 at 11:35:29AM -0400, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
Another solution (and these don't have to be mutually exclusive) might be for maintainers can explicitly state that certain patches shouldn't be backported into stable kernels. I think having an explicit "No-Backport: <Reason>" might be useful, since it documents why a maintainer requested that the patch not be backported, and being an explicit tag, it makes it clear that it wasn't just a case of the developer forgetting the "Cc: stable" tag. This makes it much better than implicit rules such as "If from: akpm then don't backport" hidden in various stable maintainers' scripts.
The number of valid cases where someone puts a "Fixes:" tag, and that patch should NOT be backported is really really slim. Why would you put that tag and not want to have known-broken kernels fixed?
If it really is not an issue, just do not put the "Fixes:" tag?
thanks,
greg k-h