On Thu, 16 Mar 2023 at 18:30, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 4:43 AM Matthieu Baerts > <matthieu.baerts@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > @Linus: in short, we would like to continue using the "Closes:" tag (or > > similar, see below) with a URL in commit messages. They are useful to > > have public bug trackers doing automated actions like closing a specific > > ticket. Any objection from your side? > > As long as it's a public link, I guess that just documents what the > drm people have been doing. > > I'm not convinced "Closes" is actually any better than just "Link:", > though. I would very much hope and expect that the actual closing of > any bug report is actually done separately and verified, rather than > some kind of automated "well, the commit says it closes it, so.." > > So honestly, I feel like "Link:" is just a better thing, and I worry > that "Closes:" is then going to be used for random internal crap. > We've very much seen people wanting to do that - having their own > private bug trackers, and then using the commit message to refer to > them, which I am *violently* against. If it's only useful to some > closed community, it shouldn't be in the public commits. Yeah I think that's fine. The bot can then autogenerate a request in the bug report to confirm that it's fixed, and ask the reporter to close in that case. And then maybe if there's no message a few weeks after the release, auto-close or something. Bot needs to make sure it's only parsing tags for the instance it's botting for anyway, so overloading Link: with all the meanings (absolutely all themeanings!) is not really a problem since Closes: has the same issue if different subsystems use it for different bug tracking needs. > And while the current GPU people seem to use "Closes:" the right way > (and maybe some other groups do too - but it does seem to be mostly a > freedesktop thing), I really think it is amenable to mis-use in ways > "Link:" is not. Huh I didn't realize this picked up. Way back we used Bugzilla: for this sometimes, but I think just using Link: for everything and letting instance-specific bots figure out whether it's relevant for them should be perfectly fine. Humans should have no problem parsing meaning out of a tag soup anyway (I mean we have Cc: stable meaning backport after all, and I think that address is a blackhole). I guess if you feel strongly we can percolate this a bit to submaintainers and contributors in drm. -Daniel > The point of "Link:" is explicitly two-fold: > > - it makes it quite obvious that you expect an actual valid web-link, > not some internal garbage > > - random people always want random extensions, and "Link:" is > _designed_ to counter-act that creeping "let's add a random new tag" > disease. It's very explicitly "any relevant link". > > and I really question the value of adding new types of tags, > particularly ones that seem almost designed to be mis-used. > > So I'm not violently against it, and 99% of the existing uses seem > fine. But I do note that some of the early "Closes:" tags in the > kernel were very much complete garbage, and exactly the kind of thing > that I absolutely detest. > > What does > > Closes: 10437 > > mean? That's crazy talk. (And yes, in that case it was a > kernel.bugzilla.org number, which is perfectly fine, but I'm using it > as a very real example of how "Closes:" ends up being very naturally > to mis-use). > > End result: I don't hate our current "Closes:" uses. But I'm very wary of it. > > I'm not at all convinced that it really adds a lot of value over > "Link:", and I am, _very_ aware of how easily it can be then taken to > be a "let's use our own bug tracker cookies here". > > So I will neither endorse nor condemn it, but if I see people using it > wrong, I will absolutely put my foot down. > > Linus -- Daniel Vetter Software Engineer, Intel Corporation http://blog.ffwll.ch
