easy alsa patches for the stable kernel? (was: Re: hda_intel : Patch + Regression in 2.6.18 -> 2.6.22)

[Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora@leemhuis.info>]

On 07.09.2007 12:21, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> At Fri, 07 Sep 2007 10:22:27 +0200,
> Romano Giannetti wrote:
>> Takashi: good news!
>>
>> diff --git a/sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c b/sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c
>> index 3557865..496d119 100644
>> --- a/sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c
>> +++ b/sound/pci/hda/patch_realtek.c
>> @@ -9044,6 +9044,7 @@ static const char *alc268_models[ALC268_MODEL_LAST] = {
>>  static struct snd_pci_quirk alc268_cfg_tbl[] = {
>>         SND_PCI_QUIRK(0x1043, 0x1205, "ASUS W7J", ALC268_3ST),
>>         SND_PCI_QUIRK(0x1179, 0xff10, "TOSHIBA A205", ALC268_TOSHIBA),
>> +       SND_PCI_QUIRK(0x1179, 0xff50, "TOSHIBA A305", ALC268_TOSHIBA),
>>         SND_PCI_QUIRK(0x103c, 0x30cc, "TOSHIBA", ALC268_TOSHIBA),
>>         SND_PCI_QUIRK(0x1025, 0x0126, "Acer", ALC268_ACER),
>>         SND_PCI_QUIRK(0x1025, 0x0130, "Acer Extensa 5210", ALC268_ACER),
> 
> Ah good.  I added it to ALSA HG tree now.

Just wondering: should easy-and-obvious and less-risky patches like this
one be send to the stable-kernel-maintainers in parallel to adding them
to the HG-Tree (or shortly afterwards)? It could safe users lots of
trouble if such improvements make it quickly into production-ready
kernel-releases (and from there they might even find their way into some
distribution kernels quickly). Hardware then would "just work".

Sure, before the stable-maintainer will take such patches they needs to
be added to linus git-tree beforehand as well. And sure, patches like
the one above are not fixing a regression (at least in this case if I
read the thread correctly; the old subject thus is misleading afaics),
but it's similar to a new PCI-ID that gets added to a existing driver --
and that's done now in the stable-series afaics (¹).

The alsa-maintainers seem to be in the best position to do this, but it
seems they rarely do it. I for example was hit by a regression (sound
worked in 2.6.20 and broke afterwards; was fixed in 2.6.23-git by the
following patch in case anybody is wondering:
http://git.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=a4eed138add1018846d17e813560b0c7c0ae8e01
), but the alsa-developers did not submit it for stable afaics. Sure, I
could do that myself, but as I said: the alsa-maintainers really have
the best overview over the alsa-patches and should know which patches
are safe to apply for older kernels.

CU
knurd

(¹) -- see for example
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-2.6.22.y.git;a=commit;h=fd2efeae63567dde934bb54772bb1b991275b04a
or
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-2.6.22.y.git;a=commit;h=3443d563dc53875b15d919c4bece391f1ffd4776
which made in into
http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.22.3