Re: [PATCH] docs: submitting-patches: Require base tree information

[Eric Biggers]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2026 at 08:35:04AM +0200, Krzysztof Kozlowski wrote:
> On 21/10/2026 08:07, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > On 10/20/26 3:07 PM, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> >> On Tue, Oct 20, 2026 at 09:22:35PM +0000, Eric Biggers wrote:
> >>> Many patches still don't include base tree information and can't be
> >>> applied.  Such patches can't be properly reviewed or tested, nor can
> >>> they be accepted.  submitting-patches.rst already describes how to
> >>> include base tree information, but it's characterized as optional,
> >>> appears only towards the end of the document, and is missing details.
> >>
> >> I'm happy with this change, but I'd disambiguate the title a bit. With b4, we
> >> started providing both a base-commit and base-tree footer, specifically
> >> because often times the "base-commit:" line by itself is not sufficient.
> >>
> >> Imagine this scenario: a developer is working on some code in a feature branch
> >> and come across a pre-existing bug. They create a fork off of their feature
> >> branch to fix the bug and send it in. In this situation, the "base-commit"
> >> footer would be meaningless, because it references some transient commit-id in
> >> their feature branch. In an ideal scenario, the developer would rebase that
> >> bugfix branch on a known tag, but that doesn't always happen.
> >>
> >> This observation doesn't really preclude this patch from being accepted, I'm
> >> just recording my own experience that, by itself, base-commit is often
> >> insufficient.
> > 
> > Yeah, I was wondering about specifying tree as well as commit, so thanks
> > answering before I even asked the question.
> > 
> > Most of my patches are made against linux-next.  So: is this going to be
> > acceptable?
> > 
> > (for linux-next-20261020:)
> > base-commit: 053966c344dbd346e71305f530e91ea77916189f
> > base-tree: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/next/linux-next.git master
> 
> According to commit msg which claims that without base information "nor
> can they be accepted. "

I actually wrote:

    Many patches still don't include base tree information and can't be
    applied.  Such patches can't be properly reviewed or tested, nor can
    they be accepted. 

So it's about patches that can't be applied due to lack of base tree
information (due to the obvious guess not working).  Not merely the lack
of such information by itself.

- Eric