Subject: Re: linux-next: current pending merge fix patches

From: Ingo Molnar <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2010 09:10:21 +0100

* Stephen Rothwell <[email-masked]> wrote:

> This could also be taken as a reminder to the respective maintiners that 
> they may want to do a merge of your tree before asking you to pull theirs.

I dont think that's generally correct for trivial conflicts: it's better if 
Linus does the merge of a tree that is based in some stable tree.

It causes slightly messier criss-cross history: there will be the back-merge 
commit plus the inevitable merge commit from Linus. It also makes bisection a 
bit messier:

For example when bisecting i generally consider the 'boundary' of where Linus 
pulls as a 'known point of stability': i.e. the 'subsystem side' is expected 
to be well-tested and if there's a problem on that side, it's that subsystem's 
domain.

"Linus's side", during the merge window, is a rolling tree of many freshly 
merged trees, which inevitably piles up a few problems.

So it's IMO somewhat better to keep that boundary and not push out Linus's 
side into subsystem trees: which then may merge a few new patches after having 
merged Linus's tree, intermixing it all into a non-bisectable combination.

Plus there's also an indirect effect: it keeps people from merging back 
Linus's tree all the time.

So i'd argue to not backmerge during the merge window (and i have stopped 
doing that myself a few cycles ago, and it clearly helped things) - but in any 
case it's certainly no big deal and up to Linus i guess.

	Ingo