Re: AUTOSEL process

From: Slade Watkins
Date: Tue Feb 28 2023 - 21:05:27 EST


On 2/28/23 06:28, Greg KH wrote:
>> But just so you know, as a maintainer, you have the option to request that
>> patches to your subsystem will not be selected by AUTOSEL and run your
>> own process to select, test and submit fixes to stable trees.
>
> Yes, and simply put, that's the answer for any subsystem or maintainer
> that does not want their patches picked using the AUTOSEL tool.
>
> The problem that the AUTOSEL tool is solving is real, we have whole
> major subsystems where no patches are ever marked as "for stable" and so
> real bugfixes are never backported properly.

Yeah, I agree.

And I'm throwing this out here [after having time to think about it due to an
internet outage], but, would Cc'ing the patch's relevant subsystems on AUTOSEL
emails help? This was sort of mentioned in this email[1] from Eric, and I
think it _could_ help? I don't know, just something that crossed my mind earlier.

>
> In an ideal world, all maintainers would properly mark their patches for
> stable backporting (as documented for the past 15+ years, with a cc:
> stable tag, NOT a Fixes: tag), but we do not live in that world, and
> hence, the need for the AUTOSEL work.

(I wish we did... Oh well.)

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/stable/Y%2Fzswi91axMN8OsA@sol.localdomain/

-- Slade