It can be after -rc1. I understand your point now from this elaboration. Since the change is not heading towards a final release yet but a release candidate, it's not an "urgent" patch to be applied before -rc1.
We are in the grey area where it is less clear which tree it should be against. So it is good to explain after the --- what your intention is, so the Maintainers get a heads up and understand what you are trying to achieve.
Agreed, I could have used git notes for that in my patch generation. Noted for the future. Just to be clear, my intention is for this fix to make its way before the final 6.5 release (before the changes make their way to an end user since the NULL pointer dereference when reading that sysfs node from a PHC not supporting phase adjustment is problematic).
A NULL pointer dereference is a valid reason for stable anyway.
I think the issue being present in a release candidate is a minor problem. Would I still keep the Fixes tag however if targeting net-next?
It is useful, even for something in net-next. It is not needed for back porting, except for making it clear back porting is not needed, But there are some statistics gathered based on Fixes tags, etc.
Andrew