Return-path: Received: from mail-ee0-f46.google.com ([74.125.83.46]:54103 "EHLO mail-ee0-f46.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1757772Ab2DLSnf convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:43:35 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: References: <20120411231102.GA6404@kroah.com> <20120412002927.GA23167@kroah.com> <20120412011313.GA23764@kroah.com> <20120412144626.GA14868@kroah.com> Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:43:33 +0300 Message-ID: (sfid-20120412_204352_961501_CB256C6C) Subject: Re: [ 00/78] 3.3.2-stable review From: Felipe Contreras To: Adrian Chadd Cc: Greg KH , Sergio Correia , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, stable@vger.kernel.org, torvalds@linux-foundation.org, akpm@linux-foundation.org, alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk, linux-wireless Mailing List , Sujith Manoharan , "ath9k-devel@lists.ath9k.org" , "John W. Linville" Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 8:24 PM, Adrian Chadd wrote: > On 12 April 2012 09:49, Felipe Contreras wrote: > >>> >>> A revert is the same as a patch.  It needs to be in Linus's tree before >>> I can add it to the stable releases. >> >> Right, because otherwise people's systems would actually work. >> >> But hey, as I said, following rules is more important, regardless of >> what the rules are, and why they are there. The rules that actually >> triggered this issue in v3.3.1, as this is not in v3.3. >> >> You could just accept that the patch should have never landed in >> v3.3.1 in the first place, but it's much easier to arbitrarily keep >> stacking patches without thinking too much about them. > > Greg is doing the right thing here. We face the same deal in FreeBSD - > people want fixes to go into a release branch first, but if you do > that you break the development flow - which is "stuff goes into -HEAD > and is then backported to the release branches." > > If you don't do this, you risk having people do (more, all) > development and testing on a release branch and never test -HEAD (or > "upstream linux" here). Once you open that particular flood gate, it's > hard to close. But this is exactly the opposite; the patch that broke things is in the 'release branch' (3.3.1); it's not in upstream (3.3). Sure, it's also on a later upstream, which is also broken. But then are you saying that if upstream is broken (3.4-rc2), then stable should be broken as well (3.3.1), and remain broken until upstream is fixed? I fail to see what would be the point of that. > We had this problem with Squid. People ran and developed on Squid-2.4. > The head version of Squid-2 was stable, but that isn't what people ran > in production. They wanted features and bugfixes against Squid-2.2, > squid-2.4, and not Squid-2.STABLE (which at the time was > Squid-2.6/Sqiud-2.7.) That .. didn't work. Things diverged quite > quickly and it got very ugly. And why do you think the same would happen here if *one patch* is applied? Plus, git is developed this way; and yes, you might say the gates are opened when there's a new non-maintenance release, but the same happens in Linux. It's not the rule of 'first on X' branch that keeps the gates safe; it's the amount of patches. > So I applaud Greg for sticking to correct stable release engineering > here. We over in the BSD world know just how painful that is. :) So, in your mind "correct" is "never ever do an exception", even if this strictness leads to less stability. If the objective is not stability, I would call this the 'backports' tree then, which might or might not lead to stability. Rules are not perfect, why not add a new rule "It reverts an earlier patch to 'stable'.", then you would be both following the rules, and ensuring more stability :) Cheers. -- Felipe Contreras