Re: [PATCH batadv 0/8] batman-adv: follow up fixes

[Yuan Tan]

On Tue, May 5, 2026 at 12:20 AM Sven Eckelmann <sven@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Tuesday, 5 May 2026 07:21:13 CEST Matthieu Baerts wrote:
> [...]
> > >>> Are you CCing netdev to get this reviewed by Sashiko?
> > >>> Please don't..
> > >>> We delegate code to sub-sub-systems to lower the patch volume :(
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >> Because of `b4 prep --auto-to-cc`. Will now manually remove you.
> > >
> > > To speed up the discussion: @Konstantin, is there a way in b4 to say "stop at
> > > the sub-sub-systems" when doing `b4 prep --auto-to-cc`? I am just trying to get the
> > > `b4` workflow somehow working with the netdev requirements.
> >
> > Maybe a new option could be added, but that seems difficult to guess
> > where to stop, and to which subsystems to apply this.
> >
> > Can you not simply omit using `b4 prep --auto-to-cc` when working
> > with "internal" patches?
>
> Yes, no, maybe :)
> I will for the moment ignore the .b4-config part and talk about it at the end
> of the mail.
>
> b4 is trying to (afaik) to have a good common work flow for kernel related
> projects (and more). Independent of my role (if I am the maintainer or just
> another contributor), it will nag before a send: "Hey, please run
> --auto-to-cc, --check, --check-deps before you submit this patch(set) - you
> know how embarrassing it is when you notice some obvious problem 2 seconds
> after the SMTP server accepted your mail."
>
> And I agree with this and also try to convince people to try b4 because I
> think it is really helpful. Or at least ask them to use
> `./scripts/get_maintainer.pl` and NOT send patches with the prefix "net" or
> "net-next" when it actually targets our tree. But as it turns out, these
> recommendation seem to have been wrong and I am sorry about this.
>
> And I know, b4 is a good tool but adding a bazillion options just for every
> special case doesn't make a lot of sense and might make it a worse tool. I was
> therefore more thinking about `scripts/get_maintainer.pl`  (see `b4.send-auto-
> cc-cmd`) which also called by b4 with various options to avoid adding too many
> people.
>
> I don't say that any of these tools need to change. I am guessing more that I
> have to adjust something (MAINTAINERS, ...) to avoid that people are sending
> batman-adv sub-sub-system patches directly to netdev. I am just not aware of
> what this should be. But it sounds to me like there is at least a need for it
> (from the netdev maintainers perspective).
>
> > On my side, that's what I'm doing. I added a .b4-config file with this
> > content, not to have to specify --set-prefix nor --to:
>
> Regarding the .b4-config - yes, this is helpful and I should add it to
> batctl.git. I was more thinking about the normal contributor to
> net/batman-adv/. Regardless of this person taking as base net/net-next.git or
> our repo.
>
> The fixes from Ren Wei (and associates) and some other people were sent with
> "net" in the prefix, were Cc'ing netdev and didn't seem to use our tree as
> base. This is of course not correct and they should have targeted our tree
> instead. I didn't complain because the fix was otherwise extremely helpful and
> I though that there was no harm done. As it looks now, I should have and I am
> sorry for not communicating this.
>
> And I am at the moment not sure how to fix this without overloading
> contributers with "when you are contributing to some sub-subsystem of netdev
> ..., but when you are contributing to ext4, other rules apply .... don't
> forget about i2c rules for patch submission, ...".
>
> But maybe I am just ignorant and this is already quite simple (and there are
> no special "netdev" rules) - I am just not aware of it. In this case, please
> point me in the right direction, just to avoid reproducing wrong
> recommendations to other people.
>
> Regards,
>         Sven

Hi Sven,

I apologize for the inconvenience this caused. This was my oversight;
I’m embarrassed to admit that I was unaware that batman-adv used its
own maintenance tree and had instructed my team to follow the standard
netdev process.

It is our responsibility as contributors to carefully follow rules. I
will update our internal guides immediately to ensure our future
patches adhere to the correct workflow.

Best,
Yuan