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Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 13:18:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: Nicolas Pitre <nico@fluxnic.net>
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To: Daniel Walker <dwalker@fifo99.com>
Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>, Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>,
        Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk>,
        Stephen Rothwell <sfr@canb.auug.org.au>, linux-next@vger.kernel.org,
        lkml <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Jeremy Kerr <jeremy.kerr@canonical.com>,
        Jeff Ohlstein <johlstei@codeaurora.org>
Subject: Re: linux-next: manual merge of the msm tree with the arm tree
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On Tue, 19 Oct 2010, Daniel Walker wrote:

> On Tue, 2010-10-19 at 15:18 +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > On Tuesday 19 October 2010, Joe Perches wrote:
> > > This could have been done:
> > > 
> > > $ git show 08a610d9ef5394525b0328da0162d7b58c982cc4 | ./scripts/get_maintainer.pl --nogit | wc -l
> > > 35
> > > 
> > > Even then, using 35 CCs is generally silly.
> > > 
> > > It might make some sense for a cover letter and a
> > > patch series where the series made tree-wide changes
> > > in multiple directories.
> > 
> > Probably not even then: When a single mail header gets too long, you usually land
> > in some spam filter and get hate mail from the list owners. The lkml limit is 1024
> > characters (this may come from an official RFC, don't know), which is usually less
> > than 35 recipients.
> 
> Patches just shouldn't be this large. You want smaller patches for a lot
> of reason. Take the BKL, would it have been acceptable to make all the
> BKL changes in a single patch (and what would the CC have looked like)?
> If you do anything remotely sophisticated then , from my perspective, a
> tree wide patch just isn't going to work.

That's why on occasions we do transgress the established process to 
accommodate such changes.  Imagine just for a moment the patch that 
modified the interrupt callback prototype to remove the useless pt_regs 
argument.  Obviously, it had to be done atomically to the _whole_ tree, 
and it was agreed that this patch was to be applied at the end of the 
merge window.  But no one expected a single minute sending a CC to _all_ 
the driver authors.


Nicolas