Re: [GIT PULL] VFIO updates for v5.19-rc1

[Linus Torvalds]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 10:11 AM Alex Williamson
<alex.williamson@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I'm not sure where git pull-request is getting the diffstat below, the
> diff of the actual merge of this against mainline looks far less scary.
> If I've botched something, please let me know.

It's all normal, and due to you having merges in your tree and
multiple merge bases.

See

    Documentation/maintainer/messy-diffstat.rst

for details (yay, Jonathan scrounged together docs so that I don't end
up having to write a long email explanation any more, and there are
links to some of my previous explanations on lore).

That also has a suggested remedy, ie just do a temporary merge and use
the diffstat from that one instead.

But I can also re-create that messy diffstat (and thus verify that
what you sent me matches what I got) here locally too.

So while the diffstat is messy and not very useful for a "this is what
changed" angle (because it has a lot of other changes mixed in), even
that messy diffstat is actually useful for my secondary reason, namely
as a verification that yes, I got what you were trying to send and
just didn't document very clearly because of those multiple merge
bases.

I can (and do) also check the shortlog, since the actual log doesn't
have any issues with merges, it's only "diff" that needs a single
well-defined <start,end> tuple.

                 Linus