From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ingo Molnar Subject: Re: linux-next: current pending merge fix patches Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2010 09:10:21 +0100 Message-ID: <20100301081021.GB8049@elte.hu> References: <20100301160445.5e281f11.sfr@canb.auug.org.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Received: from mx2.mail.elte.hu ([157.181.151.9]:37739 "EHLO mx2.mail.elte.hu" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750696Ab0CAILM (ORCPT ); Mon, 1 Mar 2010 03:11:12 -0500 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20100301160445.5e281f11.sfr@canb.auug.org.au> Sender: linux-next-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: To: Stephen Rothwell Cc: Linus , LKML , linux-next@vger.kernel.org, Len Brown , Dave Jones , Jean Delvare , Greg KH , "J. Bruce Fields" , Trond Myklebust , Sage Weil , Pekka Enberg , Christoph Lameter , Tejun Heo , Rusty Russell , Al Viro , "\"J??rn Engel\"" * Stephen Rothwell wrote: > This could also be taken as a reminder to the respective maintiners that > they may want to do a merge of your tree before asking you to pull theirs. I dont think that's generally correct for trivial conflicts: it's better if Linus does the merge of a tree that is based in some stable tree. It causes slightly messier criss-cross history: there will be the back-merge commit plus the inevitable merge commit from Linus. It also makes bisection a bit messier: For example when bisecting i generally consider the 'boundary' of where Linus pulls as a 'known point of stability': i.e. the 'subsystem side' is expected to be well-tested and if there's a problem on that side, it's that subsystem's domain. "Linus's side", during the merge window, is a rolling tree of many freshly merged trees, which inevitably piles up a few problems. So it's IMO somewhat better to keep that boundary and not push out Linus's side into subsystem trees: which then may merge a few new patches after having merged Linus's tree, intermixing it all into a non-bisectable combination. Plus there's also an indirect effect: it keeps people from merging back Linus's tree all the time. So i'd argue to not backmerge during the merge window (and i have stopped doing that myself a few cycles ago, and it clearly helped things) - but in any case it's certainly no big deal and up to Linus i guess. Ingo