Re: Elaboration on "Equivalent fix must already exist in Linus' tree"

[david@lang.hm]

On Mon, 2 Mar 2009, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 11:26 PM, Greg KH <greg@kroah.com> wrote:
>> - Show quoted text -
>> On Mon, Mar 02, 2009 at 10:44:40PM -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
>>> On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 9:57 PM, Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org> wrote:
>>>> Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> While extending the documentation for submitting Linux wireless bug
>>>>> reports [1] we note the stable series policy on patches -- that of
>>>>> having an equivalent fix already in Linus' tree. I find this
>>>>> documented in Documentation/stable_kernel_rules.txt but I'm curious if
>>>>> there is any other resource which documents this or elaborates on this
>>>>> a bit more. I often tell people about this rule or push _really_ hard
>>>>> on testing "upstream" but some people tend to not understand. I think
>>>>> that elaborating a little on this can help and will hopefully create
>>>>> more awareness around the importance of trees like Stephen's
>>>>> linux-next tree.
>>>>
>>>> Just have people google for GregKH's copious messages, telling people a fix
>>>> needs to be upstream before it goes into -stable.
>>>>
>>>> Typically you make things easy by emailing stable@kernel.org with a commit
>>>> id.
>>>>
>>>> There are only two exceptions:
>>>> * fix is upstream, but needs to be modified for -stable
>>>> * fix is not needed at all in upstream, but -stable still needs it
>>>
>>> This certainly helps, I'm also looking for good arguments to support
>>> the reasoning behind the policy so that not only will people follow
>>> this to help development but _understand_ it and so that they can
>>> themselves promote things like linux-next and realize why its so
>>> important. Mind you -- upstream for us in wireless for example is not
>>> Linus its John's tree so what we promote is not to get the fix first
>>> into Linus' tree but first into John's tree. Which is obvious to
>>> developers but perhaps not to others.
>>
>> Who are these "people" that you are trying to convince?
>
> OK small silly example is convincing distributions it may be a good
> idea to carry linux-next kernel packages as options to users to
> hopefully down the road reduce the delta between what they carry and
> what is actually upstream.

linux-next is a testing tree for developers, it changes day to day, 
doesn't contain all relavent changes, and is definantly _not_ something 
that distros should be pushing to users.

kernel.org kernels (and _possibly_ rc's) would have value (I'm glad to see 
Ubuntu making this move), but linux-next is not something that should be 
pushed out.

>> If they aren't
>> developers, why would any "others" care about our development
>> proceedures?
>
> Right -- in this case above "others" could be developers but could
> also be distribution guys. Essentially I was looking for arguments to
> push and show why linux-next is the next best thing since sliced bread
> for all those nasty deltas.
>
> Which OK -- maybe they can never disappear (?) but hopefully it can at
> least be reduced in size over time.
>
>> Heck, very few developers even read the Documentation files, I'd never
>> expect an "other" to do that :)
>
> Heh.. Maybe I expect too much of people and things.

I think you are misunderstanding linux-next and how it relates to users 
and distros.

David Lang