b4 review workflow issue with partially accepted serieses

b4 review workflow issue with partially accepted serieses

[Mark Brown]

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Hi Konstantin,

b4 review tracks the state of a series at the top level.  This gets
confused if you partially accept a series (eg, taking fixes at the start
of a bigger series that needs more work) then the state gets confused.
The bits that are accepted trigger the applied->thanks->archive flow
but that means that new versions of the series can't be ingested even
after the series is archived.  This is a pretty severe workflow problem,
there should be a way of splitting serieses and/or retrieving them from
the thanked/archived states to reviewing.

Thanks,
Mark

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Re: b4 review workflow issue with partially accepted serieses

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

On Tue, 05 May 2026 09:26:42 +0900, Mark Brown wrote:
> Hi Konstantin,
> 
> b4 review tracks the state of a series at the top level.  This gets
> confused if you partially accept a series (eg, taking fixes at the start
> of a bigger series that needs more work) then the state gets confused.
> The bits that are accepted trigger the applied->thanks->archive flow
> but that means that new versions of the series can't be ingested even
> after the series is archived.  This is a pretty severe workflow problem,
> there should be a way of splitting serieses and/or retrieving them from
> the thanked/archived states to reviewing.

Okay, I tried to figure out a good way to approach this. Splitting
series was taking me down to a very bad rabbit hole, so instead I added
a special "partial" state that will hopefully do what you're looking for
-- but please provide feedback if it's not.

Basically:

When you take a series using cherry-pick and only select a subset of its
patches, b4 now checks coverage across all patches and sets the status
to "partial" (shown as ◐ in the listing) instead of "accepted". The
review branch stays alive and in-tree exactly as it was, and the series
remains in the active working set — so when a v2 arrives, b4 picks it up
and the update_revision action lights up just as it would for a series
you're still reviewing.

You can then review it again to take more patches or do anything else
with a series that is being reviewed. If you take a subset of patches
again, the series will go back to the "partial" state. If you take them
all, it will go to "accepted".

From the action menu a "partial" series offers everything a "reviewing"
series does: take remaining patches, rebase, range-diff, upgrade to a
newer revision, snooze, mark as waiting, abandon, archive, thank, etc.

I also added a smaller bonus fix while I was in there: a "thanked"
series can now be reopened back to "reviewing" via the action menu
("Return to reviewing"), in case something was thanked prematurely. The
review branch is still in-tree for a thanked series so no reconstruction
is needed.

This is *lightly* tested and hopefully won't blow up too many times.
Modeling complex series workflows is a challenge, but hopefully any
explosions will be contained.

Thanks!
-- 
Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org>

Re: b4 review workflow issue with partially accepted serieses

[Mark Brown]

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On Tue, Jun 09, 2026 at 10:01:44PM +0000, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:

> You can then review it again to take more patches or do anything else
> with a series that is being reviewed. If you take a subset of patches
> again, the series will go back to the "partial" state. If you take them
> all, it will go to "accepted".

> From the action menu a "partial" series offers everything a "reviewing"
> series does: take remaining patches, rebase, range-diff, upgrade to a
> newer revision, snooze, mark as waiting, abandon, archive, thank, etc.

I think that should mostly work - from the description the only thing I
can think would be an issue is that if I don't send a thanks mail the
submitter might not realise that some of the patches have been applied.
I'll give it a go next time the situation comes up.

> I also added a smaller bonus fix while I was in there: a "thanked"
> series can now be reopened back to "reviewing" via the action menu
> ("Return to reviewing"), in case something was thanked prematurely. The
> review branch is still in-tree for a thanked series so no reconstruction
> is needed.

I could use this for that purpose if it turns out there's an issue.

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Re: b4 review workflow issue with partially accepted serieses

[Mark Brown]

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On Tue, Jun 09, 2026 at 10:01:44PM +0000, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:

> You can then review it again to take more patches or do anything else
> with a series that is being reviewed. If you take a subset of patches
> again, the series will go back to the "partial" state. If you take them
> all, it will go to "accepted".

> From the action menu a "partial" series offers everything a "reviewing"
> series does: take remaining patches, rebase, range-diff, upgrade to a
> newer revision, snooze, mark as waiting, abandon, archive, thank, etc.

Yeah, so the not being able to send thanks is actually blocking the
usual flow - as well as not sending the thanks mail the tool doesn't
understand that you might have no intention of taking the remaining
patches at all so there's no way to say "I'm done with this now, send
the thanks", you can just archive the series or return it to reviewing.

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Re: b4 review workflow issue with partially accepted serieses

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2026 at 12:11:51PM +0100, Mark Brown wrote:
> > You can then review it again to take more patches or do anything else
> > with a series that is being reviewed. If you take a subset of patches
> > again, the series will go back to the "partial" state. If you take them
> > all, it will go to "accepted".
> 
> > From the action menu a "partial" series offers everything a "reviewing"
> > series does: take remaining patches, rebase, range-diff, upgrade to a
> > newer revision, snooze, mark as waiting, abandon, archive, thank, etc.
> 
> Yeah, so the not being able to send thanks is actually blocking the
> usual flow - as well as not sending the thanks mail the tool doesn't
> understand that you might have no intention of taking the remaining
> patches at all so there's no way to say "I'm done with this now, send
> the thanks", you can just archive the series or return it to reviewing.

OK, to help me properly model the workflow, is there ever a situation in which
you would:

- accept patches 1-3 from v1
- request changes for patches 4-5
- wait for v2 with those changes
- apply patches 4-5 from v2

In my mind, this was always a "send a follow-up series with just those 2
patches" -- should we even support the workflow as described above?

-K

Re: b4 review workflow issue with partially accepted serieses

[Mark Brown]

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On Wed, Jun 10, 2026 at 09:46:25AM -0400, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:

> OK, to help me properly model the workflow, is there ever a situation in which
> you would:

> - accept patches 1-3 from v1
> - request changes for patches 4-5
> - wait for v2 with those changes
> - apply patches 4-5 from v2

> In my mind, this was always a "send a follow-up series with just those 2
> patches" -- should we even support the workflow as described above?

Yes, that's a thing that happens - usually in that case the early
patches are bugfixes related to the work done to enable some new feature
that is the main thrust of the series.  You can ask people to split
things out and model it as two separate serieses but that's a bit of
faff for something that's broadly a tooling issue.

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Re: b4 review workflow issue with partially accepted serieses

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2026 at 04:25:12PM +0100, Mark Brown wrote:
> > OK, to help me properly model the workflow, is there ever a situation in which
> > you would:
> 
> > - accept patches 1-3 from v1
> > - request changes for patches 4-5
> > - wait for v2 with those changes
> > - apply patches 4-5 from v2
> 
> > In my mind, this was always a "send a follow-up series with just those 2
> > patches" -- should we even support the workflow as described above?
> 
> Yes, that's a thing that happens - usually in that case the early
> patches are bugfixes related to the work done to enable some new feature
> that is the main thrust of the series.  You can ask people to split
> things out and model it as two separate serieses but that's a bit of
> faff for something that's broadly a tooling issue.

Ok, thanks for confirming. So, a partially accepted series falls in these two
workflows:

- waiting for next revision; a v+1 should wake it up and put the series back
  into review mode; additional patches may be accepted from follow-up
  revisions (partial+more)

- done and dealt with, thanks sent, series archived; a v+1 should be
  completely ignored (partial+done)

I'll see if I can disambiguate these two workflows.

Thanks,
-K

Re: b4 review workflow issue with partially accepted serieses

[Mark Brown]

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On Wed, Jun 10, 2026 at 11:35:11AM -0400, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:

> Ok, thanks for confirming. So, a partially accepted series falls in these two
> workflows:

> - waiting for next revision; a v+1 should wake it up and put the series back
>   into review mode; additional patches may be accepted from follow-up
>   revisions (partial+more)

> - done and dealt with, thanks sent, series archived; a v+1 should be
>   completely ignored (partial+done)

> I'll see if I can disambiguate these two workflows.

Yes, both those flows exist.

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Re: b4 review workflow issue with partially accepted serieses

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2026 at 04:45:50PM +0100, Mark Brown wrote:
> > Ok, thanks for confirming. So, a partially accepted series falls in these two
> > workflows:
> 
> > - waiting for next revision; a v+1 should wake it up and put the series back
> >   into review mode; additional patches may be accepted from follow-up
> >   revisions (partial+more)
> 
> > - done and dealt with, thanks sent, series archived; a v+1 should be
> >   completely ignored (partial+done)
> 
> > I'll see if I can disambiguate these two workflows.
> 
> Yes, both those flows exist.

OK, looks like this was already mostly working correctly, just needed a logic
bug fixed. You should be able to send thanks from a partially accepted series
and then archive it.

Let me know if that's fixed for you.

-K