Re: [patch 2/2] Documentation/process: Add tip tree handbook

From: Thomas Gleixner
Date: Thu Nov 08 2018 - 15:22:55 EST


On Thu, 8 Nov 2018, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 08, 2018 at 09:19:33AM -0800, Dan Williams wrote:
> >
> > I know at least StGit mail does not grok that "#"notation. I've
> > stopped using it in favor of a "Fixes:" tag. I would think "Fixes:" is
> > preferred over "# <KVER>" if only because it can be used to track
> > fixes to commits that have been backported to stable. Is there any
> > reason for "# <KVER>" to continue in a world where we have "Fixes:"?
>
> The main annoyance I have with Fixes is because it can be a pain to
> figure out what the "# <KVER>" would be. Something like:
>
> % tag --contains DEADBEEF | grep ^v | head
>
> doesn't work because kernel version numbers don't sort obviously. So
> v4.10 comes before v4.3 using a normal sort, and even sort -n doesn't
> do the right.
>
> I suppose it wouldn't be that hard to write a perl/python script that
> correctly sorts kernel version numbers, but when the "# <KVER>" is
> present, I find it convenient.
>
> (Also note that even with fast SSD's and/or everything in page cache,
> runnning "tag --contains <COMMITID>" will take a good 3-4 seconds, and
> if the git packs are not in the page cache, and/or you're unfortunate
> enough to have your git trees on an HDD.... it's not pretty.)

Fair enough. But as I said before we please let us have both the fixes tag
and a decicated backport-to one and make the latter mandatory.

It if's not there and the patch has a 'Cc: stable' tag it's easy enough to
reject it. The the submitter or the maintainer who decides that a patch
needs to be backported to stable has to wait the 4 seconds and add that
information.

Thanks,

tglx