Re: Patch "mm: fix remote numa hits statistics" has been added to the 4.9-stable tree

[Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 11:33:39AM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Wed 18-01-17 11:23:38, Greg KH wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 11:01:22AM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > > On Tue 17-01-17 17:28:25, Greg KH wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Jan 17, 2017 at 05:21:44PM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > > > > On Tue 17-01-17 17:13:03, Greg KH wrote:
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled
> > > > > > 
> > > > > >     mm: fix remote numa hits statistics
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > to the 4.9-stable tree which can be found at:
> > > > > >     http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > The filename of the patch is:
> > > > > >      mm-fix-remote-numa-hits-statistics.patch
> > > > > > and it can be found in the queue-4.9 subdirectory.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree,
> > > > > > please let <stable@vger.kernel.org> know about it.
> > > > > 
> > > > > It is not marked for stable so why it has been chosen?
> > > > 
> > > > I found it by digging through the git commit logs.
> > > 
> > > Was the Fixes tag the reason to pick it up?
> > 
> > It made me pay a bit more attention to it, yes.  I search for that and
> > other keywords, in the git log to see if there are patches that need to
> > be backported where people forget to add the stable tags.  I have to do
> > this because some subsystems still never set them :(
> 
> I am pretty sure that Andrew is really trying hard to mark all the core
> MM changes for stable. Picking up changes just because they have Fixes:
> tag in them is imho a bad idea. If somebody made the effort to add this
> tag I am pretty sure Cc: stable was considered as well. If that is not
> the case let's just push back and ask directly when a patch is submitted
> rather than picking up the patch and hope that somebody will object...
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I really do appreciate your effort here I am just
> worried that conflating Fixes: and Cc: stable is a wrong thing. I
> absolutely see a reason CC: stable should imply Fixes: but not other way
> around.

Yes, for lots of subsystems fixes: does not mean stable, but for a
non-small number of other ones, it is needed still :(

Andrew does a great job marking stable fixes, I'll try to remember that
mm: stuff should not be backported if it only has a fixes: tag in the
future.

thanks,

greg k-h