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Date:   Tue, 13 Jul 2021 09:20:43 +0200
From:   Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
To:     Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
Cc:     Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
        Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>,
        Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>,
        Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@oracle.com>,
        Miaohe Lin <linmiaohe@huawei.com>,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org,
        stable@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: 5.13.2-rc and others have many not for stable
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On Tue, Jul 13, 2021 at 08:31:57AM +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 12, 2021 at 10:55:01PM -0700, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> > On Mon, 12 Jul 2021, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > 
> > > This is the start of the stable review cycle for the 5.13.2 release.
> > > There are 800 patches in this series, all will be posted as a response
> > > to this one.  If anyone has any issues with these being applied, please
> > > let me know.
> > > 
> > > Responses should be made by Wed, 14 Jul 2021 06:02:46 +0000.
> > > Anything received after that time might be too late.
> > > 
> > > The whole patch series can be found in one patch at:
> > > 	https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v5.x/stable-review/patch-5.13.2-rc1.gz
> > > or in the git tree and branch at:
> > > 	git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable-rc.git linux-5.13.y
> > > and the diffstat can be found below.
> > > 
> > > thanks,
> > > 
> > > greg k-h
> > > 
> > > -------------
> > > Pseudo-Shortlog of commits:
> > > 
> > > Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
> > >     Linux 5.13.2-rc1
> > 
> > Hi Greg,
> > 
> > Sorry to be making waves, but please, what's up with the 5.13.2-rc,
> > 5.12.17-rc, 5.10.50-rc, 5.4.132-rc stable release candidates?
> 
> They show the problem that we currently have where maintainers wait at
> the end of the -rc cycle and keep valid fixes from being sent to Linus.
> They "bunch up" and come out only in -rc1 and so the first few stable
> releases after -rc1 comes out is huge.  It's been happening for the past
> few years and only getting worse.  These stable releases are proof of
> that, the 5.13.2-rc release was the largest we have ever done and it
> broke one of my scripts because of it :(
> 
> I know personally I do this for my subsystems, having fixes that are
> trivial things batch up for -rc1 just because they are generally not
> worth getting into -final.  But that is not the case with many other
> subsystems as you can see by these huge patch sequences.

Hm, maybe it really isn't a "problem" here, as the % overall is still
quite low of patches with fixes: and cc: stable on them compared to the
overall number of commits going in for -rc1 vs. later -rcX releases.

So it's just what it is, large numbers of changes happening, small % of
them are needed to be backported.  If someone wanted to, odds are they
could get a master's thesis out of analyzing all of this stuff :)

thanks,

greg k-h