Re: [RESEND][PATCH] checkpatch: make sure fix-up patches have Fixes tag

[Andrew Morton]

On Wed, 19 Jan 2022 09:48:32 +0000 Andy Whitcroft <apw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 9:42 AM Joe Perches <joe@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 2022-01-19 at 16:46 +0900, Sergey Senozhatsky wrote:
> > > If a patch contains "commit hash (commit name)", in other words
> > > if the patch fixes some particular commit, then require "Fixes:"
> > > tag.
> >
> > I do not like this patch as many commits merely reference a
> > previous patch and do not actually fix anything.
> 
> Agree.  It would need to be a tighter form of language to be safe to
> automatically suggest a Fixes tag.  The point of a Fixes tag is to be
> a semantically safe indicator of this relationship not relying on the
> vagaries of English for that connection.
> 
> You might be ok with something which is a tighter match on like
> "fixes <hash> (<name>)" and only suggesting a Fixes.

Also.

stable tree maintainers appear to have the habit of taking anything
which has Fixes and cheerfully backporting it.  Sometimes undesirably. 
This patch will encourage people to worsen this problem.

I wish this would simply stop, kernel-wide.  Make developers and
tree-owners actually *think* about the backport desirability.

If that were the global approach then checkpatch could

a) ask developers if they should have added "Fixes:" (this patch) then

b) if it has "Fixes:", ask developers if they should have added cc:stable.