Re: [GIT PULL] x86/mce fix (ready for 3.6 merge window)

[Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 10:04:46AM +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> A couple of commit log details:
> 
>  - If it's for v3.6 then the Cc: stable backport is not 
>    justified. Either it's for tip:x86/urgent and then we'll 
>    merge it straight away, or for tip:x86/mce for v3.6 and then 
>    there's no Cc: stable tag.

This could be part of checkpatch - whenever a stable tag is added to a
patch commit msg, it should at least warn the patch author to check with
<Documentation/stable_kernel_rules.txt> first.

>  - This reference to a commit is a bit unusual:
> 
> In commit dad1743e5993f19b3d7e7bd0fb35dc45b5326626
> x86/mce: Only restart instruction after machine check recovery if it is safe
> 
>    the canonical format is something like:
> 
>   In commit dad1743e5993f1 ("x86/mce: Only restart instruction 
>   after machine check recovery if it is safe") ...

Commit referencing in commit messages doesn't come up for the first time
so can we get this as a rule into checkpatch so that we can have unified
commit reference format?

The regex would be probably hairy and generate a couple of false
positives but sure it will help in a lot of other situations.

Also, how many chars of the commit id we keep? The first 12, 14, 15? I'm
thinking of commit id uniqueness sometime far in the future.

>  - We tend to use such an ordering of tags:
> 
>   Signed-off-by: Tony Luck <tony.luck@intel.com>
>   Acked-by: Borislav Petkov <borislav.petkov@amd.com>
>   Cc: stable@kernel.org    # 3.4+
> 
>   I.e. Tested-by and Reported-by tags first (if any), then 
>   author SOB, then SOB chain (if any), then Reviewed-by
>   and Acked-by, then stable tags, then Cc:s.

patch tags order could be checked for in checkpatch too?

[ … ]

>  - Style nit, this:
> 
>        if (mi->restartable == 0)
> 
>    is better written as:
> 
>        if (!mi->restartable)
> 
>    because mi->restartable's role here is not really an integer 
>    value, but a boolean in essence.

Yes, we talked about this but having a bool as a u8 there would add
padding to the struct so it's the same thing, space-wise. It could be
converted to a bitfield if more flags are added/needed.

>  - The 'doit' flag was significantly misnamed when kill_procs() 
>    was written and now it spreads further, it's a totally opaque 
>    name that tells nothing about the role of the flag.
> 
>    How about 'force'?

Even better, make it even more descriptive: 'force_kill' or 'do_kill' or
'really_kill' - this way one knows exactly what one is looking at.

Thanks.

-- 
Regards/Gruss,
    Boris.