Re: [PATCH v2] tracing: Make is_signed_type() compatible with sparse

[Linus Torvalds]

On Tue, 1 Sept 2026 at 13:06, Bart Van Assche <bvanassche@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> This makes me wonder whether I should switch from the official sparse
> tree (git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/devel/sparse/sparse.git) to
> your tree?

That's an option, but honestly, I don't know how good the state of
that tree is. And I'm not going to be a good maintainer of it.

If we really have lost sparse maintenance again, and nobody is willing
to step up, I can try to do a minimal job at it.

But I'll be honest: I think it's been exactly two decades since I
really worked on sparse, because I think I stopped Sept 2006, and Josh
Triplett took over, and then we've had Chris Li and Luc Van Oostenryck
doing maintenance.

So I'd treat it like I treat my microemacs "maintainance" - sporadic,
and probably with an LLM. Because I'm not really willing to put in a
lot of effort.

This is partly me fishing for some poor soul who actually *wants* to
maintain this. Because if somebody sees that "I'll use an LLM" as a
threat: that's exactly how it's meant.

But Bart, maybe you'd like a new hobby? Think of all the glory. People
stopping you in the streets, asking you whether you're the sparse
maintainer and asking for selfies.

You won't be a rock star or an astronaut (or a fireman, or a dinosaur,
or whatever you dreamt of being when you were a wee tyke), but it's
the closest us geeks will ever get.

             Linus