Re: [PATCH] docs: submitting-patches: Require base tree information

[Krzysztof Kozlowski <krzk@kernel.org>]

On 21/10/2026 17:04, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 21, 2026 at 01:55:37PM +0200, Krzysztof Kozlowski wrote:
>> Dependency is something else, but for every other patch:
>> 1. For testing/CI: you apply on top of next
>> 2. Every other case the maintainer knows where to apply it, because it
>> is his HEAD of next-branch.
>>
>> I am repeating myself, but I really had no single problem of lack of
>> knowledge where to apply a patch as a maintainer or reviewer of some
>> subsystem, thus maybe I do not understand the actual problem you are
>> experiencing.
> 
> From my perspective, I don't really want to force contributors to manually
> provide the tree information, but it's helpful if tooling includes it
> automatically.

Sure, I do not oppose this being helpful. I oppose this being a
requirement and that was the impression I got from this patch.

> 
> Specifically, I am working on a service that eager-builds git bundles for all
> submitted patch series -- the goal is to make it simple for CI systems to
> fetch patch submissions as bundles that are already applicable against
> mainline. Knowing which tree and commit the series is based on is really
> helpful when figuring this out.

This has limitations you will not be able to solve. For example, around
SoC code (ARM, ARM64, RISC-V) are often combination of minimum two
subsystems:
1. Driver code + Devicetree bindings, being picked up by driver
maintainer, e.g. drivers/clock/ or drivers/reset/
2. DTS (arch/*/boot/dts) being picked up by SoC platform maintainer who
later sends it to SoC folks (Arnd Bergmann and folks).

Such patchsets by definition target independent trees, thus the only
reasonable base to fully test it or even apply it is the linux-next.
Contributors would not be able to provide base-commit different than
linux-next, thus that information is redundant - you can just assume it
is linux-next.

And if by "tree and commit the series is based on" you meant maintainer
tree, excluding linux-next, then that information could not be even
provided, unless patchset is split.

Best regards,
Krzysztof