From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1761661AbXIUSnL (ORCPT ); Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:43:11 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1761454AbXIUSmw (ORCPT ); Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:42:52 -0400 Received: from smtp2.linux-foundation.org ([207.189.120.14]:47812 "EHLO smtp2.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1761243AbXIUSmu (ORCPT ); Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:42:50 -0400 Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 11:42:07 -0700 From: Andrew Morton To: "Maciej W. Rozycki" Cc: Andy Fleming , Jeff Garzik , netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] PHYLIB: IRQ event workqueue handling fixes Message-Id: <20070921114207.f0b54b3b.akpm@linux-foundation.org> In-Reply-To: References: <20070920165348.0b25be3d.akpm@linux-foundation.org> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 2.2.7 (GTK+ 2.8.6; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Fri, 21 Sep 2007 13:51:12 +0100 (BST) "Maciej W. Rozycki" wrote: > On Thu, 20 Sep 2007, Andrew Morton wrote: > > > You always put boring, crappy, insufficient text in the for-the-changelog > > section and interesting, useful, sufficient text in the not-for-the-changelog > > section. > > I'll swap the sections in the future then. ;-) Frankly I was not sure > whether the changelog was happy about being fed with lengthy explanations > and it has not spoken out. I think it's worth putting plenty of details in the changelog: it's compressed on-disk and on-the-wire and is overall pretty cheap. If people don't actually seek the information out, it has close to zero impact on them. But on those occasions when people _do_ seek the information out (and it can be years later) then they want every drop of information they can get. Numerous times I've gone back to the 2.5.x mm/ changelogs to work out what on earth we were thinking when we did something, and it has proved quite useful in explaining the existing code, or in suggesting possible problems which we had forgotten about by 2007. otoh, you can get a lot of handy info by googling for strategic parts of the kernel code, or by googling snippets of the existing-but-short changelog. For example, this patch: google for "Keep track of disable_irq_nosync() invocations" and voila. Perhaps we don't need changelogs at all ;)