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

["Theodore Tso" <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Thu, Aug 06, 2026 at 10:32:40PM -0500, Dan Carpenter wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 06, 2026 at 01:28:25PM -0400, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> > - actually applies
> > - isn't against a known LTS branch
> 
> No one wants patches against an LTS branch.  That would violate the
> stable rules since everything should be upstream first.

Right, we should issue a warning if it's not a backport from upstream
(e.g., if it's against an LTS branch, it should have an
Upstream-commit: tag).

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.  On the other hand, this is a pretty advanced
technique, and it's unlikely that a new kernel developer would be
doing something like this.  So we probably just ignore this case for a
newcomers-focused bot.

						- Ted