Re: [3.0-stable PATCH 00/36] Proposed 3.0-stable bug patches

Dave Chinner
2012-12-10T00:22:18Z

On Fri, Dec 07, 2012 at 03:15:36PM -0600, Ben Myers wrote:
> > > As for adding patches to 3.0-stable. I believed then and now that
> > > proactively suggesting bug fixes into 3.0-stable is a good thing
> > > because it is the long term stable branch.
> >
> > Which is in direct contrast to what most of us think. That is, if
> > nobody is reporting problems, then it ain't broke and it doesn't
> > need fixing.
>
> Who are you speaking for?

The people who have had to maintain the stable trees for the past
few years. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out who those
people are...

> > /me is playing Devil's Advocate because I'm not signing up to
> > triage a whole new set of 3.0.x stable kernel regressions when
> > nobody is currently reporting problems.....
>
> SGI XFS product is based directly upon -stable branches and I'd like to track
> these branches as closely as possible.

I'd say that's an important piece of information - i.e. stating the
motivation for doing this work. Especially as you might be
including patches that fix bugs that have never been reported
outside of SGI customers.

FWIW, I had no idea that SGI is now basing their XFS-derived
products off a current mainline tree. Can you point us to the
relevant XFS source code for these product releases? I, for one, am
interested in the updated DMAPI support infrastructure and how SGI
has implemented all the little tweaks mentioned in SGI's XFS
documentation (e.g. ibound and agskip)...

> This aligns the interests of the SGI
> XFS team and -stable users.

Enough with the marketing speak, already. Be up front with you
motivations - it helps prevent a lot of misunderstandings.

> If there are regressions, myself, Mark, Phil, Rich, and Andrew are
> signed up to fix them regardless of whether you wish to be
> involved.

I'm looking forward to seeing you guys run front-line community
bug triage, then.... :)

Cheers,

Dave.
--
Dave Chinner
david@fromorbit.com