Re: [GIT PULL] Security subsystem updates for 4.14

From: Paul Moore
Date: Mon Sep 11 2017 - 18:31:10 EST


On Sun, Sep 10, 2017 at 12:32 AM, James Morris <jmorris@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Fri, 8 Sep 2017, Paul Moore wrote:
>
>> > This is also why I tend to prefer getting multiple branches for
>> > independent things.
>
> [...]
>
>>
>> Is it time to start sending pull request for each LSM and thing under
>> security/ directly? I'm not sure I have a strong preference either
>> way, I just don't want to see the SELinux changes ignored during the
>> merge window.
>
> They won't be ignored, we just need to get this issue resolved now and
> figure out how to implement multiple branches in the security tree.

Once again, I don't really care too much either way. My only selfish
motivation is to make it as frictionless as possible to get the
SELinux tree merged into Linus' tree.

> Looking at other git repos, the x86 folk have multiple branches.

I don't really understand what advantage one repo with multiple
branches has over multiple repos, e.g. Linus' just pulling from the
individual LSM trees directly. I suppose one could make an argument
about linux-next, but I know they prefer to pull from the individual
repos directly (they pull selinux/next directly). Is it to help
reduce the load on Linus?

>From my perspective, the linux-security tree only introduces another
opportunity for things to go wrong during the merge window (as
evidenced by this latest snafu). Help me understand why a single tree
with multiple branches is beneficial to multiple trees?

Also, to be clear, I'm not picking on IMA or Mimi; this could have
easily been SELinux screwing things up for IMA (or Smack, or AppArmor,
etc.).

> One option for me would be to publish the trees I pull from as branches
> along side mine, with 'next' being a merge of all of directly applied
> patchsets and those ready for Linus to pull as one.
>
> So, branches in
> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jmorris/linux-security
>
> might be:
>
> next-selinux (Paul's next branch)
> next-apparmor-next (JJ's next branch)
> next-integrity-next (Mimi's)
> next-tpm-next (Jarkko's)
> [etc.]
>
> next (merge all of the above to here)
>
> That way, we have a coherent 'next' branch for people to develop against
> and to push to Linus, but he can pull individual branches feeding into it
> if something is broken in one of them.
>
> Does that sound useful?

--
paul moore
www.paul-moore.com