Re: [PATCH v4 2/3] checkpatch: warn when Reported-by: is not followed by Link:

[Dmitry Vyukov]

On Thu, 2 Mar 2023 at 06:40, Jakub Kicinski <kuba@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 2 Mar 2023 06:17:22 +0100 Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> > On 02.03.23 05:46, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> > > On Fri, 20 Jan 2023 13:35:19 +0100 Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> > >> Encourage patch authors to link to reports by issuing a warning, if
> > >> a Reported-by: is not accompanied by a link to the report. Those links
> > >> are often extremely useful for any code archaeologist that wants to know
> > >> more about the backstory of a change than the commit message provides.
> > >> That includes maintainers higher up in the patch-flow hierarchy, which
> > >> is why Linus asks developers to add such links [1, 2, 3]. To quote [1]:
> > >
> > > Is it okay if we exclude syzbot reports from this rule?
> > > If full syzbot report ID is provided - it's as good as a link.
> >
> > Hmmm. Not sure. Every special case makes things harder for humans and
> > software that looks at a commits downstream. Clicking on a link also
> > makes things easy for code archaeologists that might look into the issue
> > months or years later (which might not even know how to find the report
> > and potential discussions on lore from the syzbot report ID).
>
> No other system comes close to syzbot in terms of reporting meaningful
> bugs, IMHO special casing it doesn't risk creep.
>
> Interestingly other bots attach links which are 100% pointless noise:
>
> Reported-by: Abaci Robot <abaci@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Link: https://bugzilla.openanolis.cn/show_bug.cgi?id=4174
>
> Oh, eh. Let's see how noisy this check is once the merge window is over.
>
> > Hence, wouldn't it be better to ask the syzbot folks to change their
> > reporting slightly and suggest something like this instead in their
> > reports (the last line is the new one):
> >
> > ```
> > IMPORTANT: if you fix the issue, please add the following tag to the commit:
> > Reported-by: syzbot+bba886ab504fcafecafe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/cafecaca0cafecaca0cafecaca0@xxxxxxxxxx/
> > ```
> >
> > This might not be to hard if they known the message-id in advance. Maybe
> > they could even use the syzbot report ID as msg-id to make things even
> > easier. And for developers not much would change afaics, they just need
> > to copy and paste two lines instead of one.
>
> Dmitry, WDYT?

Hi Jakub, Thorsten,

Adding a Link to syzbot reports should be relatively trivial.

Ted proposed to use Link _instead_ of Reported-by:

https://github.com/google/syzkaller/issues/3596
> in fact, it might be nice if we could encourage upstream developers
> put in the commit trailer:
> Link: https://syzkaller.appspot.com/bug?id=5266d464285a03cee9dbfda7d2452a72c3c2ae7c
> in addition to, or better yet, instead of:
> Reported-by: syzbot+15cd994e273307bf5cfa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

We could also use a link in the Reported-by tag, e.g.:

Reported-by: https://syzkaller.appspot.com/b/5266d464285a03cee9db

Some folks parse Reported-by to collect stats.

What is better?