From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail.linuxfoundation.org ([140.211.169.12]:54952 "EHLO mail.linuxfoundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752411AbcJGMtm (ORCPT ); Fri, 7 Oct 2016 08:49:42 -0400 Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2016 14:48:59 +0200 From: Greg KH To: Thomas Hellstrom Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Stable list vs versioning Message-ID: <20161007124859.GB866@kroah.com> References: <20161007035236.GA16832@kroah.com> <20161007042223.GA32472@kroah.com> <3a12b7fc-f013-fe4e-8639-663cca90e015@vmware.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <3a12b7fc-f013-fe4e-8639-663cca90e015@vmware.com> Sender: stable-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Thu, Oct 06, 2016 at 09:51:08PM -0700, Thomas Hellstrom wrote: > On 10/06/2016 09:22 PM, Greg KH wrote: > > On Thu, Oct 06, 2016 at 09:19:50PM -0700, Thomas Hellstrom wrote: > >> Hi! > >> > >> On 10/06/2016 08:52 PM, Greg KH wrote: > >>> On Thu, Oct 06, 2016 at 06:54:43PM -0700, Thomas Hellstrom wrote: > >>>> Hi, Stable! > >>>> > >>>> As you might be aware of, some companies that maintain linux kernel > >>>> drivers have the habit of assigning each driver change a new version > >>>> number. > >>> And, as you have found out, that's a horrible thing to do for Linux and > >>> doesn't work at all :) > >>> > >>> Just because it works for other slower-moving operating systems, I > >>> wouldn't recommend doing it for Linux. > >> Yes, I'm fully aware of the difficulties, though I was hoping that I, > >> with the help some bright ideas from the list could come up with a > >> clever way to make everybody happy. > > But who has the problem here really? Not the kernel community or > > developers, but rather an odd set of unskilled QA people (your word, not > > mine.) > > > > Why can't they get more "skill"? :) > > > > thanks, > > > > greg k-h > > Well, I would in no way call our QA people unskilled just because they > in general don't have the skill to know how to locate a particular, > sometimes well-hidden git repo and find out if a certain bug is fixed or > not. Not even Einstein knew how to do that ;) Huh? All of the kernel trees we "release" are in one single repo, and it is very well known (linked to off of the kernel.org site front page): https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git How is that difficult to find? > But I won't try to argue here. I do think, though, that as long as > people believe the easier solution is to version each change they will > keep on doing that and unfortunately as a result important patches won't > get CC'd stable because that would mess up the versioning. > > From your answer I take it there is no interest from the stable > maintainers in helping solving this using some kind of mainline hash > registering tool. I guess perhaps another option is to locally automate > stable / distro git tree scanning. Maybe I really don't understand the "issue" you are trying to address here, can you try to rephrase it by showing a real example of what you are trying to solve? But again, there's nothing we can do about out-of-tree code, remember, they know where we are (and I'll take anything!), but we don't know where they are... thanks, greg k-h