Re: [PATCH 3.12 000/104] 3.12.27-stable review

From: Jiri Slaby
Date: Tue Aug 26 2014 - 07:32:23 EST


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On 08/23/2014, 08:10 PM, David Miller wrote:
> From: Guenter Roeck <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2014
> 08:14:54 -0700
>
>> On 08/21/2014 01:05 AM, Jiri Slaby wrote:
>>> The last three are just cosmetical in 3.12. And I do not
>>> immediately see in the rest, how they could improve the state.
>>> So I am going to remove the add-basic-validations patch from
>>> 3.12.
>>>
>>
>> Build and tests now look good.
>
> I am hugely disappointed in this.

Yes, me too.

> This is why I really do all the backports for each -stable release
> myself and I therefore really wish there was more thought put into
> when these changes are placed into other trees.

If everybody were using the standard stable rules and did not
introduce a very special patches handling, we would have known what
stable trees should contain which patches. Not only that everybody is
confused about the special handling, but fixes for holes happened to
be missed in the special process several times as of now.

Furthermore, with the special handling and given subtree maintainers
provide backports only to selected stable trees, we have no way to
find out what should (not) be applied. Interpolation is only what
remains for us poor. (Leaving apart the great testing by the guys.)

> Almost all of those sparc64 memory management fixes should not go
> into anything before v3.13, because all of these fixes are in the
> context of the page tables encoding PMDs using the PTE layout.

Again, until subtree maintainers distribute their private local
knowledge somehow, we cannot know.

> If you're just forcing changes you see go into other -stable
> submissions into your tree until they compile, and just hoping that
> a tester will catch any problems, you are absolutely doing it wrong
> and taking a large amount of value out of the -stable releases.

Actually, like it or not, this is exactly how all stable trees work
for specific scenarios/hardware. And then, we have the -rc's. If patch
authors do not bother to reply to the "patch added" mails despite they
know it is inappropriate, stable maintainers are short of
possibilities. Unless they are lucky, i.e. maintain a selected stable
tree, where a subtree maintainer provides them with a set of patches
for that tree.

thank you,
- --
js
suse labs
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