Re: [Ksummit-discuss] bug-introducing patches

[Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>]

On Thu, May 03, 2018 at 02:46:14PM +0000, Sasha Levin wrote:
> I'll work on breaking up the 4.16 commits into categories, but one
> interesting statistic I've noticed while starting the work is:
> 
> Fixes in -rc cycles:
> rc1 68
> rc2 147
> rc3 88
> rc4 121
> rc5 40
> rc6 193
> rc7 98
> 
> Average days in -next, for a fix, per -rc cycle:
> rc1 27.25
> rc2 21.4286
> rc3 22.5114
> rc4 18.281
> rc5 14.65
> rc6 12.6166
> rc7 8.70408
> 
> Fixes for bugs not introduced in current merge window:
> rc1 40
> rc2 113
> rc3 61
> rc4 79
> rc5 25
> rc6 139
> rc7 72
> 
> So for some reason, there is a rush to push fixes for older bugs (that
> were not introduced in the current merge window) to the point that rc7
> commits that only existed for a few days are merged in to address older
> bugs.

IMHO it's because it's the time it takes for users to start to trust the
3rd or 4th stable release of the previous version, to switch to it, to
face a bug, to report it, and for the maintainer to write a fix.

I wouldn't be much surprised if you'd find that among those not introduced
in the current merge window, many were introduced in the previous release.

Willy