Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/33] My PS3-specific patches for 2.6.31

From: Michael Ellerman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:32:31 +1000

On Thu, 2009-06-11 at 10:48 +1000, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-06-10 at 15:53 -0600, Gary Thomas wrote:
> 
> > Trying to understand the process (in preparation for any patches
> > I may want to push upstream) - how can this be too late for 2.6.31?
> > 2.6.30 just came out today...
> 
> I'm taking the liberty to reply to the list here because I think
> more people need to understand that problem :-)
> 
> Because the process is such that new features can only be merged
> during the 2 weeks merge window, which started ... yesterday.
> 
> Also, it's frowned upon to have lots of new stuff close to the end of
> the merge window.
> 
> The idea is that stuff to go into 2.6.31 should have essentially been
> ready to merge -before- the merge window opens, ie, before 2.6.30 is
> released, for us maintainers to be ready to push things out when the
> merge window open and spend that time sorting out collisions &
> conflicts, -not- reviewing new features that have been sent way too
> late.

The way I think of it is that the "merge window" is the time for
maintainers to merge with Linus.

So if you're sending patches to a maintainer you need to have sent all
your patches to them _before_ then. So the merge window for you is the
weeks prior to the "merge window".

cheers