Re: [Ksummit-2013-discuss] KS Topic request: Handling the Stable kernel, let's dump the cc: stable tag

Guenter Roeck
2013-07-15T23:22:09Z

On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 03:38:08PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> On 07/15/2013 03:07 PM, Guenter Roeck wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 11:04:28PM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> >> On Mon, 2013-07-15 at 13:19 -0700, Guenter Roeck wrote:
> >>> That seems to be a bit drastic. It is quite useful to have the tag,
> >>> but maybe it should only be added by the maintainer and not in the initial
> >>> patch submission. This would ensure that the maintainer(s) made the decision.
> >>> If the original patch submitter thinks that the patch is stable material,
> >>> that information could be added in the comments section.
> >>
> >> In the case where a maintainer applies a patch with 'git am', surely
> >> they can *see* that it's cc:stable?
> >>
> > If that maintainer is careful, yes. But that isn't the point or idea. The
> > difference is that the maintainer would have to make an active decision
> > to add the cc:stable tag vs. just going along with it.
> >
>
> WTF? If a maintainer applies a patch and misses that the thing had a
> Cc: <stable> tag, that maintainer should never have applied the patch in
> the first place.
>

I agree, _should_. But again, that is not the point I was trying to make.
The keyword is _active_ decision vs. passive acceptance of a stable tag.

If the stable tag is not added by the maintainer, it can always be added to
the stable queue after the code was pushed upstream. Nothing lost but a bit
of convenience.

Guenter