Subject: Re: linux-next: rebase of the jdelvare-hwmon quilt series

From: Jean Delvare <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 09:39:28 +0200

On Thu, 11 Jul 2013 16:53:43 +1000, Stephen Rothwell wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Jul 2013 07:57:00 +0200 Jean Delvare <[email-masked]> wrote:
> > On Thu, 11 Jul 2013 10:27:24 +1000, Stephen Rothwell wrote:
> > > Why have you just rebased the jdelvare-hwmon series
> > > (http://khali.linux-fr.org/devel/linux-3/jdelvare-hwmon/)?  You have
> > > just invalidated your testing and made it likely that Linus will blast
> > > you if you ask him to pull your patches.  Your whole series was already
> > > based after v3.10 (i.e. released or rebased after the merge window
> > > opened), so why move it again?
> > 
> > I'm quite confused by this complaint of yours. I do not have the
> > feeling that I rebased anything or invalidated any testing. And I don't
> > think I did anything different this time from the way I have been
> > proceeding for years.
> 
> Probably not, I guess I have been getting more sensitive lately.
> However, you have changed the base of your quilt series.  This means that
> you have included more changes from Linus' tree into your tree, thus any
> testing you have done previously may be invalidated by those changes.

And then what? Linus will end up merging these patches into his
up-to-date tree anyway. Me staying on an old tree is not going to help
anything. I am precisely trying to stick to Linus' tree as much as
possible, precisely to me sure that 1* merging my patches will be a
trivial operation for Linus and 2* I can detect and fix any build or
run-time issue before Linus merges my patches.

Isn't linux-next itself rebased on Linus's latest tree every day for
exactly that reason?

> > I had only 2 hwmon patches for Linus for this merge window:
> >   hwmon-lm63-drop-redundant-safety.patch
> >   hwmon-lm90-drop-redundant-safety.patch
> 
> Yeah, sorry, but I was complaining to several people today.
> 
> > They have been in
> > http://khali.linux-fr.org/devel/linux-3/jdelvare-hwmon/ (and thus in
> > linux-next) continuously since May 19th so I'd say they received pretty
> > good testing. I did not touch them, I did not even have to refresh them.
> 
> Actually, those patches only hit linux-next on July 9 (my time), when the
> were based on v3.10-6005-gd2b4a64.

Hmm, that would mean I forgot to update my public series when I
accepted them. That's embarrassing and I apologize for that, this
should not happen. My tree is seeing so little change these days, it
can stay for weeks without a change, so if I forget to export once, it
can take long before the omission is repaired.

> Then today you changed the base of
> your series to v3.10-8587-g496322b and added another patch.

Yes I did. I always do that.

> > 3 days ago I added these 2 patches to the hwmon-for-linus branch of my
> > staging tree:
> > http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/jdelvare/staging.git/log/?h=hwmon-for-linus
> > and asked Linux to pull from it.
> 
> Which is probably when they hit linux-next.

I suppose so, yes. Updating my public patch series is a preliminary
step to preparing my staging tree for Linus to pull from.

> > Yesterday I reviewed a new (trivial) hwmon patch, and I accepted it, so
> > it was added to http://khali.linux-fr.org/devel/linux-3/jdelvare-hwmon/ as 
> > hwmon-w83792d-update-module-author.patch (and thus went to linux-next.)
> 
> And I have no problem with maintainers making judgement calls about
> simple patches during the merge window.

FWIW I would have accepted the patch even if it was not trivial and it
would have gone in linux-next just the same. The only difference is
whether I consider the patch for this merge window or only for the next.

Is there a policy to not include new patches in linux-next during a
merge window if the patch is for the next merge window? If so I wasn't
aware of it. I always considered that the earlier a patch gets in
linux-next, the better.

> It all seems a bit trivial when we are talking about 2 patches, but it is
> the process that is important.

I'm fine respecting any process in place, but at this point I still do
not understand how what I did is supposed to be wrong or problematic. I
can't believe you are asking me to not rebase my quilt series on
Linus's latest kernel tree every now and then, to make sure it still
applies cleanly. This is exactly what quilt is good for.

So please tell me exactly what you expect from me. Was I supposed to
base my patches on v3.10 rather than following Linus's v3.11
development tree until I sent my pull request? This would put the
merging burden on his (and your) shoulders instead of mine, which seems
wrong. And if so, what am I supposed to do after Linus has actually
pulled my changes? What if I need to send a second round of patches
during the merge window?

Confused,
-- 
Jean Delvare