linux-kernel - Re: about the flood of trivial patches and the Code of Conduct (was: Re: [PATCH 19/25] sched: Use bool function return values of true/false not 1/0)

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Date:	Tue, 7 Apr 2015 09:28:03 -0400
From:	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>
To:	"Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@...ysocki.net>
Cc:	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
	Richard Weinberger <richard.weinberger@...il.com>,
	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>, Joe Perches <joe@...ches.com>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
Subject: Re: about the flood of trivial patches and the Code of Conduct (was:
 Re: [PATCH 19/25] sched: Use bool function return values of true/false not
 1/0)

On Tue, Apr 07, 2015 at 02:31:23PM +0200, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> > 
> > As per the other branch of this tree; an emphatic NO to that. The
> > trivial tree is not a backdoor to bypass maintainers. Actual code
> > changes do not get to go through any tree but the maintainer tree unless
> > explicitly ACKed.
> 
> Well, practically speaking, that would make changes like the recent
> clockevents_notify() removal very difficult to carry out.  Also there is
> some natural cross-talk between certain subsystems.

I would not call the clockevents_notify() series "trivial". More advanced
clean ups that are system wide, would be different, because you are changing
the way the code works. The maintainers must be Cc'd, but sometimes I find
those changes are very hard to get acks from everyone. But again, the change
is a non trivial clean up and has other reasons for going in than just to
make the code look nice.

> 
> Different matter is the real value of tree-wide cleanup changes.  If code is
> old enough it often is better to leave it alone, even though it may be doing
> things that we don't usually do nowadays.

Or maybe it's a good time to rewrite that code such that everyone can understand
it today ;-)

> 
> Or things that new patches are not supposed to do, for that matter, so
> I generally don't like the "checkpatch.pl error fix" changes in the old code.
>

I totally agree with that. But for non trivial clean ups, old code should be
updated too.

-- Steve
 
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