[RFC 3/4] Documentation: Add cutoff periods for patch acceptance

Kevin Cernekee
2014-12-15T06:13:46Z

This has been a recurring source of confusion for the new submitters who
I've helped; let's see if adding a small illustration improves the
situation.

Signed-off-by: Kevin Cernekee <cernekee@gmail.com>
---
Documentation/development-process/5.Posting | 16 ++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 16 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/development-process/5.Posting b/Documentation/development-process/5.Posting
index 14f8b01..50cf4dc 100644
--- a/Documentation/development-process/5.Posting
+++ b/Documentation/development-process/5.Posting
@@ -35,6 +35,22 @@ merge window has closed. You can visit https://www.kernel.org/ to check
the merge window status; it is closed if the "mainline:" entry shows a
version number containing "-rc", and open if a non-rc version number appears.

+In many cases, feature additions received and accepted somewhere in the range
+of [N-rc1, N-rc5) will be merged into the -next tree targeting the (N+1) Linux
+release. For example:
+
+ kernel.org "mainline:" | Patch may appear
+ field when posted | in released kernel
+ ------------------------+--------------------------------
+ 3.18-rc[1-4] | 3.19
+ 3.18-rc[5-9] | 3.20
+ 3.18 | Merge window open - don't post
+ 3.19-rc[1-4] | 3.20
+ 3.19-rc[5-9] | 3.21
+ 3.19 | Merge window open - don't post
+
+Bug fixes can typically be accepted at any time.
+

5.2: BEFORE CREATING PATCHES

--
2.1.1