Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:56:51 +0200
From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
To: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>,
       Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
       Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
       Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
       Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com>
Subject: Re: Fix quilt merge error in acpi-cpufreq.c
Message-ID: <20090416075651.GB4507@elte.hu>
References: <200904140159.n3E1x1K1014705@hera.kernel.org> <alpine.LFD.2.00.0904151013260.4132@localhost.localdomain> <49E62BD5.6090508@zytor.com> <200904161130.28129.rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
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* Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au> wrote:

> On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 04:17:49 am H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> > Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > "build fix" is valid and proper use: it tells that it
> > fixes a compilation error, which succinctly communicates both the
> > priority of the fix and how it needs to be validated.
> 
> Side note: I really prefer to see the compile error output in this 
> case: great for googling.  It annoys me when people skip this.
> 
> Anyway, Impact: had lead me to think harder about my messages than 
> the free-form commit style did.  Perhaps it's too rigid, but it 
> helped.

btw., and i think this is the crux of the matter, Rusty was quite 
sceptic about impact lines in the beginning, and did not like them 
_at all_. We had discussions (months ago) about it with Rusty and he 
had a similar position to other "read only" participants in this 
thread.

And i can tell it from the other side of the fence: Rusty's trees 
were very nice before, but they became _even_ nicer after he started 
using impact lines. It was very noticeable.

Impact lines are intentionally rigid - but all 'forced' measures 
(like signed-off lines, or a title, or other patch submission 
standards) are rigid in a way and they elicit an initial backlash 
from people who have never adhered to them before.

Impact lines have most of their effects on the people who _write_ 
them: contributors and first-hop maintainers. Their role becomes 
informative as the hops increase - and they might even become 
annoyingly meaningless and verbose as the hop count reaches Linus 
;-)

	Ingo
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