Re: [REGRESSION] Linux kernel 6.12.75 fails to compile with -Werror=implicit-function-declaration

[Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>]

On Thu, Mar 05, 2026 at 05:40:09PM +0000, Brett A C Sheffield wrote:
>On 2026-03-04 20:00, Peter Schneider wrote:
>> I already found and reported this in the RC cycle [1], and Sasha dropped it in -rc2 [2], and now in the release, it
>> obviously has, somewhat mysteriously, reappeared [3], affecting all of today's 6.x stable branch releases.
>
>Greg, Sasha et al.
>
>Can we make a small adjustment to the stable kernel testing process please,
>whereby we release a kernel that we have actually tested, instead of adding and
>dropping patches at the last moment and releasing a kernel that no one has
>tested?
>
>We are only a small pool of testers. If we find a bug, can we fix it, release a
>new RC and test again please?  We can have an RC3. Even an RC4.  Perhaps if we
>bogoselect fewer patches in the first place we might have less work to do. It's
>better to miss a backport for a bug no one has reported than to pull stuff in
>without proper review.

Could you suggest which fixes from v6.19..v6.19.6 could have been left outside
the tree?

>The current stable process is introducing bugs. Bugs that never existed in
>mainline.

Releasing yesterday's tree was (my) human error: I don't have as much
automation and scripting as Greg does, so many of the steps I've taken were
manual and prone to errors. I'm working on improving this workflow on my end.

This, however, wasn't an issue with our process, which is why I'm curious which
bugs you're referring to?

>The 3 kernels released today were tested by no one before release.

Right - the 3 kernels released today simply dropped a commit that caused a
built failure. We sometimes do that to address simple build or functionality
breakages (this happened with v6.19.2 and v6.19.5 too).

I don't disagree that there's a risk in doing so, but the risk is fairly minor,
and doing a quick release allows users to get important fixes without waiting
another cycle.

We could discuss a policy change here, but could you show that doing these
quick releases introduced regressions?

If not, why are we changing something that works?

>The seven kernels yesterday were similarly tested by no one before release.
>We weren't given the opportunity.

Could you explain this point please? There were quite a few folks who provided
their Tested-by...

-- 
Thanks,
Sasha