Re: Policy regarding linux-next only changes

[Mark Brown]

On Thu, Jul 02, 2026 at 12:49:39PM +0100, Gary Guo wrote:

> For obvious reasons I have concern about this practice; being a maintainer
> shouldn't mean that you're allowed to add random stuff to linux-next. This
> reminds me of another case last month
> https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260604210704.41751-1-ojeda@xxxxxxxxxx/ where the
> added stuff via TOMOYO tree breaks Rust build on linux-next. I think this
> practice is questionable and I would like a clarification on the policy of
> adding stuff that is not upstream material.

> I recognize that there is a need to add commits that serve as testing and
> debugging purpose to linux-next, but I think any of these changes should be
> temporary in nature and have acknowledgement from maintainers of touched code.

Yes, the idea is that -next should normally just have things that are
currently intended to go to Linus by the end of the next merge window.
Obviously there's some flexability, especially for things that are
within the tree itself, but we're trying to get a heads up on things
we'll see in mainline not just do random experimental stuff.  I'd
especially not to see people putting in changes specific to other trees
without some coordination with the maintainers of the other trees.

> Perhaps these changes should also be in a separate topic branch which gets
> pulled from linux-next temporarily.

People do sometimes ask to put separate trees in for things like this,
it does depend a bit on how the branch that goes into -next is
constructed.  Some trees put a merge of various branches into -next but
send the individual branches to Linus for example, they can just add
something to their merge easily enough.

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