linux-kernel - Re: [RFC] to rebase or not to rebase on linux-next

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Message-ID: <4AE5E415.801@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
Date:	Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:01:57 +0100
From:	Stefan Richter <stefanr@...6.in-berlin.de>
To:	Theodore Tso <tytso@....edu>
CC:	"Luck, Tony" <tony.luck@...el.com>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Nicolas Pitre <nico@...xnic.net>,
	Stephen Rothwell <sfr@...b.auug.org.au>,
	"Luis R. Rodriguez" <mcgrof@...il.com>,
	Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org>,
	Robert Richter <robert.richter@....com>,
	Dmitry Torokhov <dmitry.torokhov@...il.com>,
	Jean Delvare <khali@...ux-fr.org>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC] to rebase or not to rebase on linux-next

Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 25, 2009 at 09:53:41PM -0700, Luck, Tony wrote:
>> If the "rewind" is simply to add "signed-off-by" notations, update
>> commit comments (or code comments) ... then it does seem useful to
>> keep the commit chain anchored to the original commit, as the testing
>> that has been done is all still valid.
>>
>> But as soon as you talk about fixing bugs ... then you ought to
>> just do a "rebase".  The code you are adding has changed, so it is
>> incorrect to preserve the illusion that these changes have had
>> extensive testing against the old commit base.  The code has changed,
>> so the testing clock gets reset to zero.
> 
> I don't think anyone should (or does?) use the base version of a patch
> series as an indication of how much testing a patch series has
> received.  It doesn't make much sense.

FWIW, I agree to the above.  But the below...

> Suppose I update the 40th patch of a 50th patch series to add check
> for kmalloc() returning NULL that had been inadvertently left out, or
> some other error checking is added.  Or suppose I add a new tracepoint
> definition to a 50 patch series.

...are bad examples in the context of linux-next, IMO.  A missing
allocation failure check or a missing tracepoint don't break
bisectability.  So why discard this history?  (It was already published
in a release preview.)

> Sorry, I'm not going to rewind the
> entire patch series because someone thinks the base version of the
> patch series somehow is a magic "test clock" indicator....

Indeed.  Not even the commit date of individual patches says something
about how extensive they were tested.  Besides, testers might never have
tested that particular head; it's more likely that they ran a merge
result which was never published anywhere, or they tested a patch
stand-alone on top of whatever kernel they happened to have at hand
(e.g. a distro kernel) when the patch author asked them to test some fix
or feature.
-- 
Stefan Richter
-=====-==--= =-=- ==-=-
http://arcgraph.de/sr/
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