Re: Policy: "routed through for-next, ... unless introduced in the most recent cycle"

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

On 7/28/26 13:39, Ilpo Järvinen wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Jul 2026, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
>> Hi Ilpo! I stumbled about a few messages of yours where you apply a
>> commit for later mainlining were you wrote this:
>>
>>> FYI [if applicable to your patch], as per Linus' policy change, also
>>> fixes are mostly routed through for-next unless the fix is for a
>>> commit introduced in the most recent cycle or is clearly a regression
>>> fix.
>>
>> Could you point me to the source of "per Linus' policy change"? I really
>> wonder if I missed something, as from what I know Linus wants fixes for
>> regressions in all recent released merged quickly (e.g. in the current
>> cycle), unless very dangerous or so. My knowledge is among others based
>> on this statement from Linus:
>> https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAHk-=wis_qQy4oDNynNKi5b7Qhosmxtoj1jxo5wmB6SRUwQUBQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
> [...]
> What I'm referring to is this policy change:
> 
> https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wjt1NiKOdyAMz_DT7NmZ++SizPOhRSi492ukdTnpDzHQw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
> 
> Perhaps it's just misunderstanding of my wording. [...]

Yeah, words is not as clear as math, and even the latter sometimes
leaves room for interpretation if you are not careful. :-D

Many thanks for the detailed explanation, now I understand your intend
better. It's just that "people queue fixes for recently user-reported
regressions in for-next instead of mainlining them quickly" was one of
the biggest problems I saw when I started regression tracking. It got
better, but there is still a lot of room for improvement, which is why
that short note got me wondering what the exact meaning was. But seems
we are mostly in alignment here.

Ciao, Thorsten