linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v4] checkpatch: check for missing Fixes tags

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Date:   Tue, 11 Jul 2023 08:48:34 -0700
From:   Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>
To:     Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@...aro.org>
Cc:     Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@...mhuis.info>,
        Andy Whitcroft <apw@...onical.com>,
        Joe Perches <joe@...ches.com>,
        Dwaipayan Ray <dwaipayanray1@...il.com>,
        Lukas Bulwahn <lukas.bulwahn@...il.com>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>, Sasha Levin <sashal@...nel.org>,
        Tom Gall <tom.gall@...aro.org>, kernel-janitors@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4] checkpatch: check for missing Fixes tags

On Tue, Jul 11, 2023 at 04:48:14PM +0300, Dan Carpenter wrote:
> This check looks for common words that probably indicate a patch
> is a fix.  For now the regex is:
> 
> 	(?:(?:BUG: K.|UB)SAN: |Call Trace:|stable\@|syzkaller)/)
> 
> Why are stable patches encouraged to have a fixes tag?  Some people mark
> their stable patches as "# 5.10" etc.  This is useful but a Fixes tag is
> still a good idea.  For example, the Fixes tag helps in review.  It
> helps people to not cherry-pick buggy patches without also
> cherry-picking the fix.
> 
> Also if a bug affects the 5.7 kernel some people will round it up to
> 5.10+ because 5.7 is not supported on kernel.org.  It's possible the Bad
> Binder bug was caused by this sort of gap where companies outside of
> kernel.org are supporting different kernels from kernel.org.
> 
> Should it be counted as a Fix when a patch just silences harmless
> WARN_ON() stack trace.  Yes.  Definitely.
> 
> Is silencing compiler warnings a fix?  It seems unfair to the original
> authors, but we use -Werror now, and warnings break the build so let's
> just add Fixes tags.  I tell people that silencing static checker
> warnings is not a fix but the rules on this vary by subsystem.
> 
> Is fixing a minor LTP issue (Linux Test Project) a fix?  Probably?  It's
> hard to know what to do if the LTP test has technically always been
> broken.
> 
> One clear false positive from this check is when someone updated their
> debug output and included before and after Call Traces.  Or when crashes
> are introduced deliberately for testing.  In those cases, you should
> just ignore checkpatch.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@...aro.org>

Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>

-- 
Kees Cook