On Tue, 06 Dec 2022 21:43:43 +0000, Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 12/6/22 19:20, Mark Brown wrote: > >> I almost suggested doing that on multiple occasions this cycle, but ultimately > >> decided not to because it would effectively mean splitting series that touch KVM > >> and selftests into different trees, which would create a different kind of > >> dependency hell. Or maybe a hybrid approach where series that only (or mostly?) > >> touch selftests go into a dedicated tree? > > > > Some other subsystems do have a separate branch for kselftests. One > > fairly common occurrence is that the selftests branch ends up failing to > > build independently because someone adds new ABI together with a > > selftest but the patches adding the ABI don't end up on the same branch > > as the tests which try to use them. That is of course resolvable but > > it's a common friction point. > > Yeah, the right solution is simply to merge selftests changes > separately from the rest and use topic branches. Don't know if this is what you have in mind, but I think that we should use topic branches for *everything*. The only things for which I don't use a separate branch are the odd drive-by patches, of the spelling fix persuasion. That's what we do for arm64 and the IRQ subsystem. It is a bit more involved at queuing time, but makes dropping series from -next extremely easy, without affecting the history. And crucially, it gives everyone a hint to base their stuff on a stable commit, not a random "tip of kvm/queue as of three days ago". M. -- Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.
