On Mon, 16 Apr 2018 17:16:10 +0000 Sasha Levin Alexander.Levin@microsoft.com wrote:
So if a user is operating a nuclear power plant, and has 2 leds: green one that says "All OK!" and a red one saying "NUCLEAR MELTDOWN!", and once in a blue moon a race condition is causing the red one to go on and cause panic in the little province he lives in, we should tell that user to fuck off?
LEDs may not be critical for you, but they can be critical for someone else. Think of all the different users we have and the wildly different ways they use the kernel.
We can point them to the fix and have them backport it. Or they should ask their distribution to backport it.
Hopefully they tested the kernel they are using for something like that, and only want critical fixes. What happens if they take the next stable assuming that it has critical fixes only, and this fix causes a regression that creates the "ALL OK!" when it wasn't.
Basically, I rather have stable be more bug compatible with the version it is based on with only critical fixes (things that will cause an oops) than to try to be bug compatible with mainline, as then we get into a state where things are a frankenstein of the stable base version and mainline. I could say, "Yeah this feature works better on this 4.x version of the kernel" and not worry about "4.x.y" versions having it better.
-- Steve