Subject: Re: linux-next: build failure after merge of the btrfs tree

From: David Sterba <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2021 14:14:09 +0200

On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 01:58:53PM +0300, Andy Shevchenko wrote:
> On Friday, October 29, 2021, David Sterba <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 11:52:26AM +0200, David Sterba wrote:
> > > On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 09:09:24PM +1100, Stephen Rothwell wrote:
> > > > Hi all,
> > > >
> > > > [I am not sure why this error only popped up after I merged Andrew's
> > > > patch set ...]
> >
> >
> 
> 
> 
> > Also I think that next time you can use some older version of the
> > for-next branch instead of making the whole subsystem depend on BROKEN.
> > This causes much more harm in the testing setups that suddenly can't
> > work at all, compared to testing a few days older branch.
> 
> The Linux Next reflects current state of affairs and marking something
> which is definitely broken as BROCKEN is what I expect as a developer who
> tests some other stuff on top of broken code.

I'd argue against using the big 'depdends BROKEN' hammer as much as
possible, surely not for linux-next. Normaly the BROKEN status is earned
after known unfixed breakage for subsystems where nobody cares. If code
is buggy and causes crashes when testing linux-next, that's something we
want to see, not "no test results at all".

Can you imagine all compilation breakages in linux-next get resolved by
BROKEN? I know Stephen is capable of fixing various compilation problems
by himself and given the whole-tree scope it's heroic efforts, leaving
the shortcuts for the rest. In this case the fix may not be obvious so
I'd understand not merging my for-next branch at all or merging a stub
like the latest rc instead, ie. resolving that on the integration level
and not touching the config or code itself.