Re: Policy regarding linux-next only changes

[Mark Brown]

On Sun, Jul 05, 2026 at 11:16:02PM +0900, Tetsuo Handa wrote:
> On 2026/07/05 21:06, Mark Brown wrote:
> > On Sat, Jul 04, 2026 at 02:06:43PM +0200, Miguel Ojeda wrote:

> Example 1: (not a problem with linux-next only patch, but a communication problem)

>   Linus's "None of this makes any sense." comment at
>   https://lkml.kernel.org/r/CAHk-=wjmFiptPgaPx9vY3RG=rqO452UmOAPb1y_f9GQBtuJVjg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>   made Mikulas to say "I don't know what else to do." at
>   https://lkml.kernel.org/r/290bd5eb-9638-53ce-3c71-23b996d6ba54@xxxxxxxxxx , causing
>   https://lkml.kernel.org/r/329e1951-0704-4d90-aeeb-ffc7123f4262@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx and
>   https://lkml.kernel.org/r/9a05e50c-75c1-4452-b40f-f5a8b487f3ed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx to stall.
>   We need clarification from Linus or response from Mikulas.

That's less than a week old, and isn't it part of a bigger discussion
that was going on between the filesystem people and the fuzzer people
about how much to trust the data on disks?

> Example 2: (a problem with moving from linux-next only patch to networking patch, but a communication problem)

>   I responded to Jakub's "Have you see netdev_hold() / netdev_put() ?" comment at
>   https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20260325192214.133ffaaf@xxxxxxxxxx but got no response.
>   I need clarification or response from Jakub. If some core maintainer asks network
>   people "Let's update all existing dev_put()/dev_hold() users to use netdev_put()/
>   netdev_hold()", some progress would be made. No progress as long as no response.

That one seems like you need to follow up, it's been a quite a while.
Probably mentioning the issues with netdev_hold()/put() (you said there
were some, but I can't tell from the thread what they are) and the
patches you want in one mail so things are more directly actionable.

> Example 3: (a problem with linux-next only patch, but a communication problem)

>   I responded to Al's "Not a peep in the logs, breakage still there" comment at
>   https://lkml.kernel.org/r/ebceac56-6a65-4918-b47c-1fb87aa66989@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>   but got no response. Therefore, I sent an updated version
>   https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/next/linux-next.git/commit?id=3ae78a69d3a9a4ad1d3b267324bd742654f40965
>   to linux-next, and I am currently waiting for syzbot to reproduce this problem.

Again, that one seems fairly new (a bit staler than the first one).  We
did have the merge window though, some people drop everything when that
passes.

It does look like you're seeing some stuff getting dropped on the floor
here but TBH it doesn't look super unusual.  There is a bit of an issue
in our processes with things getting stuck in a quite submitter
unfriendly way so you do often need to keep pushing on things.

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