Re: [PATCH v3 1/3] MAINTAINERS: Update maintainers for paravirt ops and VMware hypervisor interface

[Sasha Levin]

On Thu, Nov 11, 2021 at 11:40:02AM -0800, Srivatsa S. Bhat wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 11, 2021 at 07:45:02PM +0100, Greg KH wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 11, 2021 at 07:39:16AM -0800, Srivatsa S. Bhat wrote:
> > > On Thu, Nov 11, 2021 at 07:50:39AM +0100, Greg KH wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Nov 10, 2021 at 12:08:16PM -0800, Srivatsa S. Bhat wrote:
> > > > > From: Srivatsa S. Bhat (VMware) <srivatsa@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > >
> > > > > Deep has decided to transfer maintainership of the VMware hypervisor
> > > > > interface to Srivatsa, and the joint-maintainership of paravirt ops in
> > > > > the Linux kernel to Srivatsa and Alexey. Update the MAINTAINERS file
> > > > > to reflect this change.
> > > > >
> > > > > Signed-off-by: Srivatsa S. Bhat (VMware) <srivatsa@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > > Acked-by: Alexey Makhalov <amakhalov@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > > Acked-by: Deep Shah <sdeep@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > > Acked-by: Juergen Gross <jgross@xxxxxxxx>
> > > > > Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > >
> > > > Why are MAINTAINERS updates needed for stable?  That's not normal :(
> > >
> > > So that people posting bug-fixes / backports to these subsystems for
> > > older kernels (stable and LTS releases) will CC the new subsystem
> > > maintainers.
> >
> > That's not how stable releases work at all.
> >
> > > That's why I added CC stable tag only to the first two
> > > patches which add/replace maintainers and not the third patch which is
> > > just a cleanup.
> >
> > Patches for stable kernels need to go into Linus's tree first, and if
> > you have the MAINTAINERS file updated properly there, then you will be
> > properly cc:ed.  We do not look at the MAINTAINERS file for the older
> > kernel when sending patches out, it's totally ignored as that was the
> > snapshot at a point in time, which is usually no longer the true state.
>
> Sure, but that's the case for patches that get mainlined (and
> subsequently backported to -stable) /after/ this update to the
> MAINTAINERS file gets merged into mainline.
>
> When adding the CC stable tag, the case I was trying to address was
> for patches that are already in mainline but weren't CC'ed to stable,
> and at some later point, somebody decides to backport them to older
> stable kernels. In that case, there is a chance that the contributor
> might run ./get_maintainer.pl against the stable tree (as that's the
> tree they are backporting the upstream commit against) and end up not
> CC'ing the new maintainers. So, I thought it would be good to keep the
> maintainer info updated in the older stable kernels too.

If you look at cases like these, I can see an argument around bringing
it back to -stable. However, changes in the upstream MAINTAINERS file
aren't limited to just change in maintainers.

How would we handle addition of maintainers of a new code upstream? Or
removal of maintainers due to code deletion? Or code movement upstream
that isn't reflected in the stable tree (think a driver graduating from
staging).

It becomes a mess quite quickly and the easiest solution here is to just
use upstream's MAINTAINERS file.

Maybe we should just remove MAINTAINERS from stable trees to make it
obvious.

--
Thanks,
Sasha