Re: [Ksummit-2013-discuss] When to push bug fixes to mainline

From: Ben Hutchings
Date: Tue Jul 16 2013 - 22:58:27 EST


On Tue, 2013-07-16 at 22:10 +0200, Willy Tarreau wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 03:43:09PM -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> > On Tue, 2013-07-16 at 12:11 -0700, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> >
> > > People mark stable patches that way already today with a:
> > > Cc: stable <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> # delay for 3.12-rc4
> > > or some such wording. I take those and don't apply them until the noted
> > > release happens, so you can do this if needed.
> >
> > I guess the thing is, are stable patches prone to regressions. Do we
> > just do that for patches that we think are too complex and may cause
> > some harm. Of course, there's the question about having a clue about
> > what patches might cause harm or not.
>
> We'd probably better switch the tag to be "# now" to imply that we don't
> want to delay them, and that by default those merged prior to rc4 are all
> postponed.

I think this might work. I definitely agree that most fixes aren't
worth the risk of allowing into a stable release that quickly, so it's
the right default.

> I suspect that the switching could be mostly automated this way,
> avoiding to add burden to Greg :
>
> - if commit ID >= -rc4
> move to immediate queue, it's a "critical" fix as per Linus' rules
>
> - if Cc: stable line has "now" at the end, move to immediate queue as
> the maintainer takes this reponsibility ;
>
> - otherwise move to the next .2 queue.

I can't speak for Greg, but that seems reasonably easy to implement.
(Which I would have to do, as I was unable to reuse Greg's scripts.)

Ben.

--
Ben Hutchings
Humans are not rational beings; they are rationalising beings.

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