Re: stable cc's in linux -next was Re: [BUG] x86: bootmem broken on SGI UV

["Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@sisk.pl>]

On Sunday, October 10, 2010, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 2:34 PM, Dave Airlie <airlied@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Do we track people dong this at all? I wonder how many patches in
> > linux-next have cc: stable in them but haven't been submitted to
> > Linus,
> 
> The other side of that coin is to wonder how many patches get marked
> as "stable" when they definitely shouldn't be.
> 
> I know that's a non-empty set. Too many developers think that the
> thing they fix is so important that it needs to be backported. And it
> doesn't help that Greg is sometimes over-eager to take things without
> them being even in my tree long enough to get much testing.
> 
> Quite frankly, if somebody has something in "next" (and really meant
> for the _next_ merge window, not the current one) that is marked for
> stable, I think that shows uncommonly bad taste. And that, in turn,
> means that the "stable" tag is also very debatable. It clearly cannot
> be important enough to really be for stable if it's not even being
> aggressively pushed into the current -rc.

Well, I know of at least one regression fix that is waiting in linux-next
for the upcoming merge window and it most likely is tagged as -stable material.

The problem with the "stable" tag is that people have to add it before the patch
is put into their non-rebasing branches, which makes it appear in linux-next
before it goes to your tree.  This tag is arguably convenient for Greg, because
it allows him to automatically cherry-pick "stable" candidates from the
mainline, though.

Thanks,
Rafael