Re: Policy regarding linux-next only changes

[Miguel Ojeda]

On Sat, Jul 4, 2026 at 12:15 PM Tetsuo Handa
<penguin-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Basic constraint is
> https://github.com/google/syzkaller/blob/master/docs/syzbot.md#no-custom-patches .

No, that section talks about two different things: patches that are
fixes as well as temporary debugging patches.

For the former, it just says you should talk to maintainers to land
the fix. That is: you need agreement from maintainers, which is what
we have been saying.

For the latter, it simply says that sometimes debugging patches have
been added in the past to linux-next. It doesn't say it was done
unilaterally. (And even if it did, it is just a third-party document).

Critically, the section also explicitly ends with:

  "One can also always run syzkaller locally on any kernel for better
stress testing
   of a particular subsystem and/or patch."

...which sounds logical to me and is precisely what I was asking. So
to me it seems you don't actually need to put it in linux-next.

Now, reading the Google Groups thread you link, it seems like your
*actual constraint* doesn't come from syzkaller, but rather that you
want to use the compute resources Google allocates for big trees like
linux-next.

I understand it may be nice to use such resources, but the solution is
to talk to both sides, as you do in that thread. From what I see, they
even offered to add a mailing list for those patches:

  "Aleksandr says we can create a special mailing list to test draft
  patches, so the series sent to that list is fuzzed for some time,
  similarly to how upstream patch testing works now.
  Do you think that would help you to debug these issues? "

So what happened with that? It seems there was a way forward there,
no? (Cc'ing Alexander from that thread)

Cheers,
Miguel