[RFC] docs: netdev: additional info requirements for bug fixes

[RFC] docs: netdev: additional info requirements for bug fixes

[Jakub Kicinski]

Knowing how AI generated patches were tested would be great help
when reviewing them. Explicitly ask people to describe discovery
and validation process they followed.

Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
---
 Documentation/process/maintainer-netdev.rst | 28 +++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 28 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/process/maintainer-netdev.rst b/Documentation/process/maintainer-netdev.rst
index ec7b9aa2877f..ffec42effe66 100644
--- a/Documentation/process/maintainer-netdev.rst
+++ b/Documentation/process/maintainer-netdev.rst
@@ -263,6 +263,34 @@ as a patch to the list with a commit message explaining the technical
 problems with the reverted commit. Reverts should be used as a last resort,
 when original change is completely wrong; incremental fixes are preferred.
 
+Bug fixes
+~~~~~~~~~
+
+All bug fixes must clearly state how the issue was discovered and validated,
+and how the fix was tested. This should be done in plain English, not with
+special tags or annotations.
+
+Example statements describing discovery:
+
+- discovered by a non-AI static analysis tool.
+- discovered by an AI code review agent.
+- discovered by manual code inspection.
+- triggered during code development.
+- triggered in CI testing.
+- observed on a machine in real use.
+
+If the issue was not observed in reality (e.g. it was caught by an AI tool
+or manual code inspection), the next sentence should describe the
+reproduction. The reproduction should state whether kernel modifications
+were necessary (e.g. inserting a delay to widen the race). The commit message
+must disclose if error injection or loading a special kernel module was used
+to trigger the issue. The reproduction steps should be included in the commit
+message if they are short (roughly 10 lines or fewer); longer reproducers can
+be posted online with a link included.
+
+The testing statement should explain whether the fix was tested against the
+reproducer and against kernel selftests.
+
 Stable tree
 ~~~~~~~~~~~
 
-- 
2.55.0

Re: [RFC] docs: netdev: additional info requirements for bug fixes

[Jakub Kicinski]

On Mon, 27 Jul 2026 13:47:24 -0700 Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> +All bug fixes must clearly state how the issue was discovered and validated,
> +and how the fix was tested. This should be done in plain English, not with
> +special tags or annotations.
> +
> +Example statements describing discovery:
> +
> +- discovered by a non-AI static analysis tool.
> +- discovered by an AI code review agent.
> +- discovered by manual code inspection.
> +- triggered during code development.
> +- triggered in CI testing.
> +- observed on a machine in real use.
> +
> +If the issue was not observed in reality (e.g. it was caught by an AI tool
> +or manual code inspection), the next sentence should describe the
> +reproduction. The reproduction should state whether kernel modifications
> +were necessary (e.g. inserting a delay to widen the race). The commit message
> +must disclose if error injection or loading a special kernel module was used
> +to trigger the issue. The reproduction steps should be included in the commit
> +message if they are short (roughly 10 lines or fewer); longer reproducers can
> +be posted online with a link included.
> +
> +The testing statement should explain whether the fix was tested against the
> +reproducer and against kernel selftests.

We should probably also add that the commit message of a fix must
describe the impact to the user.

FWIW the intention is that we'd either quote this text at people
until they comply or even get an AI bot looking at all patches coming
in and deciding if commit message is good enough. With some tuning
LLM should be able to check that the 4 items are covered.