Re: Autoselect patches for stable (Was: Re: [PATCH AUTOSEL for 4.9 36/56] drm/i915: Fix the level 0 max_wm hack on VLV/CHV)

[Josh Boyer]

On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 10:07 AM,  <alexander.levin@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 11:21:52AM +0000, Emil Velikov wrote:
>> - Document the autoselect process
>>Information about about What, Why, and [ideally] How - analogous to
>>the normal stable nominations.
>>Insert reference to the process in the patch notification email.
>
> I agree with this one, and it'll definitely happen. The story behind
> this is that this is all based on Julia Lawall's work which is well
> documented in a published paper here:
>
>         https://soarsmu.github.io/papers/icse12-patch.pdf
>
> I have modified inputs and process, but it essentially is very similar
> to what's described in that paper.
>
> While I have no problem with sharing what I have so far, this is
> still very much work in progress, and things keep constantly changing
> based on comments I receive from reviewers and Greg, so I want to
> reach a more stable point before trying to explain things and change
> my mind the day after :)
>
> If anyone is really interested in seeing the guts of this mess I
> currently have I can push it to github, but bear in mind that in it's
> current state it's very custom to the configuration I have, and is
> a borderline unreadable mix of bash scripts and LUA.
>
> Ideally it'll all get cleaned up and pushed anyways once I feel
> comfortable with the quality of the process.
>
>> - Make the autoselect nominations _more_ distinct than the normal stable ones.
>>Maintainers will want to put more cognitive effort into the patches.
>
> So this came up before, and the participants of that thread agreed
> that adding "AUTOSEL" in the patch prefix is sufficient. What else
> would you suggest adding?

The root of the concern seems to be around how the stable process
currently works and how auto-selection plays into that.  When Greg
sends out the RC, the default model of "if nobody objects, this patch
will get included in the next stable release" works because a human
already identified as that needing to be included.  So the review is
looking for a NAK, but that's overriding another human's explicit
decision with reasons.  For something that is auto-selected, people
seem concerned that the default should be flipped.  Perhaps they'd be
more comfortable if auto-selected packages required a human ACK before
they are included?

josh