Re: [PATCH] scripts: stable: add script to validate backports

[Sasha Levin]

On Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 11:52:26AM -0700, Nick Desaulniers wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 6:56 AM Greg Kroah-Hartman
> <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 16, 2021 at 02:31:33PM -0700, Nick Desaulniers wrote:
> > > A common recurring mistake made when backporting patches to stable is
> > > forgetting to check for additional commits tagged with `Fixes:`. This
> > > script validates that local commits have a `commit <sha40> upstream.`
> > > line in their commit message, and whether any additional `Fixes:` shas
> > > exist in the `master` branch but were not included. It can not know
> > > about fixes yet to be discovered, or fixes sent to the mailing list but
> > > not yet in mainline.
> > >
> > > To save time, it avoids checking all of `master`, stopping early once
> > > we've reached the commit time of the earliest backport. It takes 0.5s to
> > > validate 2 patches to linux-5.4.y when master is v5.12-rc3 and 5s to
> > > validate 27 patches to linux-4.19.y. It does not recheck dependencies of
> > > found fixes; the user is expected to run this script to a fixed point.
> > > It depnds on pygit2 python library for working with git, which can be
> > > installed via:
> > > $ pip3 install pygit2
> > >
> > > It's expected to be run from a stable tree with commits applied.  For
> > > example, consider 3cce9d44321e which is a fix for f77ac2e378be. Let's
> > > say I cherry picked f77ac2e378be into linux-5.4.y but forgot
> > > 3cce9d44321e (true story). If I ran:
> > >
> > > $ ./scripts/stable/check_backports.py
> > > Checking 1 local commits for additional Fixes: in master
> > > Please consider backporting 3cce9d44321e as a fix for f77ac2e378be
> >
> > While interesting, I don't use a git tree for the stable queue, so this
> > doesn't really fit into my workflow, sorry.
>
> Well, what is your workflow?

That's a trick question :) I don't think something like this should
target our workflow, but rather should be for someone who wants to send
patches over to stable@.

I also think that the formatting patch shouldn't be checking for proper
formatting, but rather should just be doing it on it's own.

What I don't know is the right place to put it in... It can go into
stable-queue.git, but there are very few people who are aware of it's
existance, and even a smaller number who knows how it works.

--
Thanks,
Sasha