Re: [PATCH] MAINTAINERS: name the libata/linux for-next branch

[Matthias Goergens <matthias.goergens@gmail.com>]

Hi Niklas,

On Thu, Sep 24, 2026 at 11:32:19AM +0200, Niklas Cassel wrote:
> I think this could have been written simpler, without references to dates.

Agreed, your wording is better.  I'll use it, together with the
s/tree/branch/ fix, in a v2.

> But in reality, if you want to clean things up, why limit it to these three?
>
> Write a script that clones all trees, compares HEAD against what is
> is Linux Next (Next/Trees file). If it diverges, add the branch name to
> the tree entry in MAINTAINERS.

That script is how I found these: about 160 T: lines diverge.  libata
isn't a one-off; it's in the first small batch of the plan I described
in the ext4 thread [1].

I'm sending them in small batches rather than all at once because I'd
invariably get something wrong, or miss a subsystem's conventions, and
I'd rather learn that from a handful of maintainers than from 160.
Exhibit A is the KVM/arm64 reply [2]: that for-next is purely an
integration branch and patches there must be based on a tag from
Linus's tree, so naming it would have sent people to the wrong place.
Comparing HEAD with Next/Trees can't tell that apart from a branch like
yours.  So I now also look at how each branch is built, and I'm holding
back the ones that look like integration branches, block included,
until I know how to word them.

As for the other two: SCSI went out in the same first batch [3], and
nvme.git isn't in Next/Trees at all, so the script never flagged it.
Thanks for the offered Acked-by; I'll Cc you when block comes up.

Thanks,
Matthias

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260924033200.3615554-1-matthias.goergens@gmail.com/
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/all/877bkb3zjq.wl-maz@kernel.org/
[3] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260924033541.3624532-1-matthias.goergens@gmail.com/