On Tue, Apr 14, 2020 at 04:49:20PM +0100, Edward Cree wrote:
On 14/04/2020 16:16, Sasha Levin wrote:
Are you suggesting that a commit without a fixes tag is never a fix?
Because fixes are much more likely than non-fixes to have a Fixes tag, the absence of a fixes tag is Bayesian evidence that a commit is not a fix. It's of course not incontrovertible evidence, since (as you note) some fixes do not have a Fixes tag, but it does increase the amount of countervailing evidence needed to conclude a commit is a fix. In this case it looks as if the only such evidence was that the commit message included the phrase "NULL pointer dereference".
I've pointed out that almost 50% of commits tagged for stable do not have a fixes tag, and yet they are fixes. You really deduce things based on coin flip probability?
$ git log --oneline -i --grep "fixes:" v4.19..stable/linux-4.19.y | wc -l 6235 $ git log --oneline v4.19..stable/linux-4.19.y | wc -l 12877
Look at that, most fixes in -stable *don't* have a fixes tag. Shouldn't your argument be the opposite? If a patch has a fixes tag, it's probably not a fix?
"it does increase the amount of countervailing evidence needed to conclude a commit is a fix" - Please explain this argument given the above.
Fixes can (and should) come in during a merge window as well. They are not put on hold until the -rc releases.
In networking-land, fixes generally go through David's 'net' tree, rather than 'net-next'; the only times a fix goes to net-next are when
This is great, but the kernel is more than just net/. Note that I also do not look at net/ itself, but rather drivers/net/ as those end up with a bunch of missed fixes.
a) the code it's fixing is only in net-next; i.e. it's a fix to a previous patch from the same merge window. In this case the fix should not be backported, since the code it's fixing will not appear in stable kernels. b) the code has changed enough between net and net-next that different fixes are appropriate for the two trees. In this case, only the fix that went to 'net' should be backported (since it's the one that's appropriate for net, it's probably more appropriate for stable trees too); the fix that went to 'net-next' should not. Or's original phrasing was that this patch "was pushed to net-next", which is not quite exactly the same thing as -next vs. -rc (though it's similar because of David's system of closing net-next for the duration of the merge window). And this, again, is quite strong Bayesian evidence that the patch should not be selected for stable.
To be honest, that this needs to be explained to you does not inspire confidence in the quality of your autoselection process...
Nothing like a personal attack or two to try and make a point?