Re: [PATCH 6.1 00/42] 6.1.15-rc1 review

[Paolo Abeni]

On Fri, 2023-03-03 at 10:23 +0100, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 03, 2023 at 02:34:05PM +0530, Naresh Kamboju wrote:
> > On Fri, 3 Mar 2023 at 13:34, Paolo Abeni <pabeni@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > I read the above as you are running self-tests from 6.2.1 on top of an
> > > older (6.1) kernel. Is that correct?
> > 
> > correct.
> > 
> > > If so failures are expected;
> 
> Shouldn't the test be able to know that "new features" are not present
> and properly skip the test for when that happens?  

I was not aware that running self-tests on older kernels is a common
practice. I'm surprised that hits mptcp specifically. I think most
networking tests have the same problem.

Additionally, some self-tests check for known bugs/regressions. Running
them on older kernel will cause real trouble, and checking for bug
presence in the running kernel would be problematic at best, I think.

> Otherwise this feels
> like a problem going forward as no one will know if this feature can be
> used or not (assuming it is a new feature and not just a functional
> change.)

I don't understand this later part, could you please re-phrase?

Users should look at release notes and/or official documentation to
know the supported features, not to self-tests output ?!?

Thanks!

Paolo

p.s. for some reasons I did not receive the previous replies, I had to
fetch the conversation from the ML archives.