Re: Fix quilt merge error in acpi-cpufreq.c

Ingo Molnar
2009-04-16T07:58:25Z

* Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au> wrote:

> On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 04:17:49 am H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> > Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > "build fix" is valid and proper use: it tells that it
> > fixes a compilation error, which succinctly communicates both the
> > priority of the fix and how it needs to be validated.
>
> Side note: I really prefer to see the compile error output in this
> case: great for googling. It annoys me when people skip this.
>
> Anyway, Impact: had lead me to think harder about my messages than
> the free-form commit style did. Perhaps it's too rigid, but it
> helped.

btw., and i think this is the crux of the matter, Rusty was quite
sceptic about impact lines in the beginning, and did not like them
_at all_. We had discussions (months ago) about it with Rusty and he
had a similar position to other "read only" participants in this
thread.

And i can tell it from the other side of the fence: Rusty's trees
were very nice before, but they became _even_ nicer after he started
using impact lines. It was very noticeable.

Impact lines are intentionally rigid - but all 'forced' measures
(like signed-off lines, or a title, or other patch submission
standards) are rigid in a way and they elicit an initial backlash
from people who have never adhered to them before.

Impact lines have most of their effects on the people who _write_
them: contributors and first-hop maintainers. Their role becomes
informative as the hops increase - and they might even become
annoyingly meaningless and verbose as the hop count reaches Linus
;-)

Ingo