On Thu, Apr 11, 2024 at 08:59:39AM +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
On 11.04.24 07:29, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
On Thu, Apr 11, 2024 at 07:25:04AM +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
Some developers deliberately steer clear of 'Fixes:' tags to prevent changes from being backported semi-automatically by the stable team. That somewhat undermines the reason for the existence of the Fixes: tag, hence point out there is an alternative to reach the same effect.
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/dfd87673-c581-4b4b-b37a-1cf5c817240d@leemhuis.in... Signed-off-by: Thorsten Leemhuis linux@leemhuis.info
Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.rst | 6 ++++++ 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+)
diff --git a/Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.rst b/Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.rst index 7bb16d42a51833..ebd57cb9277f7b 100644 --- a/Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.rst +++ b/Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.rst @@ -117,6 +117,12 @@ comment to pass arbitrary or predefined notes: Note, such tagging is unnecessary if the stable team can derive the appropriate versions from Fixes: tags.
- Prevent semi-automatic backporting of changes carrying a 'Fixes:' tag:
- .. code-block:: none
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org> # no semi-automatic backportI do not understand, why are you saying "cc: stable" here if you do NOT want it backported?
Because the only alternative the developers have to make the stable team not pick a single patch[1] is to deliberately omit a Fixes: tag even if the patch normally should have one. Like it was done here: https://lore.kernel.org/all/cover.1712226175.git.antony.antony@secunet.com/
That feels odd, but ok I now see the need for this for some minor set of changes (i.e. this has rarely come up in the past 15+ years)
And that somehow felt wrong to me, as discussed earlier in https://lore.kernel.org/all/dfd87673-c581-4b4b-b37a-1cf5c817240d@leemhuis.in...
[1] e.g. if they don't have or want their whole subsystem marked as 'ignore for the AUTOSEL and the "Fixes tag only" tools' https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git/tree...
And what do you mean by "semi-automatic"?
E.g. 'ignore for the AUTOSEL and the "Fixes tag only" tools'. That was the best term I came up with.
Thinking about it more, I think we need to be much more explicit, and provide the reason why.
How about: cc: do-not-apply-to-stable@kernel.org # Reason goes here, and must be present
and we can make that address be routed to /dev/null just like stable@kernel.org is?
thanks,
greg k-h