Hi All, Couple years ago folks suggested that bpf-next should be a separate pull request to increase subsystem visibility. Back then we rejected the idea since many networking related changes required bpf core changes. Things are different now. bpf kfuncs can be added independently by various subsystems, verifier additions are mainly driven by sched-ext, so it's time to give it a shot. It's an experiment. If things don't work out as expected we will go back to the old model of feeding bpf trees through net/net-next trees. So here is the plan: 1. bpf fixes go directly to Linus (skipping net tree) and net/bpf trees are fast forwarded afterwards as usual. 2. Non-networking bpf commits land in bpf-next/master branch. It will form bpf-next PR during the merge window. 3. Networking related commits (like XDP) land in bpf-next/net branch. They will be PR-ed to net-next and ffwded from net-next as we do today. All these patches will get to mainline via net-next PR. 4. bpf-next/master and bpf-next/net branches are manually merged into bpf-next/for-next branch. This step achieves two objectives: - bpf maintainers watch for conflicts between /master and /net - Stephen Rothwell continues taking /for-next branch into linux-next as usual bpf CI will run tests against 4 trees (instead of 2): bpf, bpf-next/master, bpf-next/net, bpf-next/for-next. This is wip. Watch for more "Checks" in patchwork. By the merge window in September we will reassess the situation and if it's still worth doing we will proceed with PR formed from bpf-next/master. If not, we will PR bpf-next/master into net-next and call it a failed experiment. We feel that there are more positives to this process than headaches, so fingers crossed.
