Re: RFC: backport of commit a32c1c61212d

[Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@gmail.com>]

On 9/1/2020 9:06 AM, Doug Berger wrote:
> On 9/1/2020 7:00 AM, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:

[snip]

> Sorry for the confusion, but thanks for the reply.
> 
> There is functionality that exists in Linus' tree, but it is not the
> result of a single commit that can be easily backported. I have been
> unable to find anything in the documentation for submitting a patch to a
> stable branch that covers this type of submission so I have sent this as
> an RFC about process rather than a patch.
> 
> The upstream commit that ultimately results in the functional change is:
> commit a32c1c61212d ("arm: simplify detection of memory zone boundaries")
> 
> That commit is dependent on other commits that aren't necessary for the
> stable branches.
> 
> In my downstream kernel I would apply the single line patch included in
> my original email, but it is not appropriate to apply that patch to
> Linus' tree since the problem does not exist there.
> 
> This creates the situation where a simple patch could be applied to a
> stable branch to improve its stability, but there is not a clear
> upstream commit to reference.
> 
> My best guess at this point is to submit patches to the affected stable
> branches like the one in my RFC and reference a32c1c61212d as the
> upstream commit. This would be confusing to anyone that tried to compare
> the submitted patch with the upstream patch since they
> wouldn't look at all alike, but the fixes and upstream tags would define
> the affected range in Linus' tree.
> 
> I would appreciate any guidance on how best to handle this kind of
> situation.

You could submit various patches with [PATCH stable x.y] in the subject 
to indicate they are targeting a specific stable branch, copy 
stable@vger.kernel.org as well as all recipients in this email and see 
if that works.

Not sure if there is a more documented process than that.
-- 
Florian