Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Coping with the new-developer flood

[Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>]

On Fri, Aug 07, 2026 at 11:20:39AM +0200, Matthieu Baerts wrote:
> On 07/08/2026 05:23, Theodore Tso wrote:
> > There are some few exceptions, where a fix can't be easily backported
> > to the LTS branch, and so a different way of fixing a particular
> > serious patch needs to be applied to the LTS branch.  But normally
> > this will be explicitly stated in the commit description, but we don't
> > do that in a structured way, so it might be hard for a non-LLM bot to
> > figure this out.
> 
> Good point, but instead of looking at the patch description, it might be
> enough to look at the header: an exception could be added for patches
> sent to the stable ML with a version in the prefix.
> 
> But back to the idea of checking if the patch can apply: it might not be
> easy to deal with all the different trees and branches. There might be
> some dependences that are still in review, or applied somewhere but not
> in linux-next yet, or conflicts with linux-next, etc.

This is an issue that isn't limited to newcomers. As a maintainer, I
sometimes don't know what I should apply a patch series on. We have the
base-commit and prerequisite-patch-id trailers added by b4 that help a
lot there, but not everybody uses them. If a mechanism that flags the
issue for newcomers could also ensure that every patch series carries
proper base information, that would be a very nice side effect. This may
include adding new trailers if some use cases are not currently covered.

> Plus note that
> Sashiko will generally complain if it cannot find where to apply it.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart