Re: [PATCH v2 net] net: dsa: microchip: make learning configurable and keep it off while standalone

[Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Tue, Aug 23, 2022 at 03:01:13PM -0700, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Aug 2022 00:42:53 +0300 Vladimir Oltean wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 23, 2022 at 02:38:31PM -0700, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> > > > @maintainers: when should I submit the backports to "stable", for older
> > > > trees?  
> > > 
> > > "when" as is how long after Thu PR or "when" as in under what
> > > conditions?  
> > 
> > how long after the "net" pull request, yes.
> > I'm a bit confused as to how patches from "net" reach the stable queue.
> > If they do get there, I'm pretty confident that Greg or Sasha will send
> > out an email about patches failing to apply to this and that stable
> > branch, and I can reply to those with backports.
> 
> Adding Greg, cause I should probably know but I don't. 
> 
> My understanding is that Greg and Sasha scan Linus's tree periodically
> and everything with a Fixes tag is pretty much guaranteed to be
> selected. Whether that's a hard guarantee IDK. Would be neat if it was
> so we don't have to add the CC: stable lines.

Please add cc: stable lines, that's the documented way to get a patch
into the stable kernel tree for the past 17+ years.

Only recently (5+ years?) have we also been triggering off of the
"Fixes:" tags, and we only started doing that for subsystems that never
was adding cc: stable tags :(

And also, the "Fixes:" tags are on the "slow path" to get into the
stable tree, sometimes taking a very long time, and sometimes just being
ignored entirely if we are busy with other work.  The only guaranteed
way is to tag it with cc: stable.

> Also not sure if it's preferred to wait for the failure notification 
> or you should pre-queue the backport as soon as it reaches Linus.
> I vague recall someone saying to wait for the notification...

It's easier for us if you wait for the rejection email, otherwise I have
to know to store it and save it for when I reject it in a few weeks in
the future, which is a pain on my end given the amount of email we have
to handle.

thanks,

greg k-h