On Thu, 2020-06-04 at 11:31 +0300, Dan Carpenter wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 04, 2020 at 12:08:49AM +0200, Linus Walleij wrote:
[]
> > Fixes means it fixes something that was wrong in that commit.
> > That's all. Whether syntactic or semantic or regression or
> > serious or not does not matter. It is also not compulsory to
> > add it is just helpful.
>
> Fixes tag should be compulsory for actual bug fixes. We had a the
> Bad Binder exploit last year because commit f5cb779ba163
> ("ANDROID: binder: remove waitqueue when thread exits.") had no Fixes
> tag and wasn't backported to Android kernels.
Fixes tags IMO should be exclusively for actual bug fixes
and should be mandatory.
Perhaps:
---
Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst | 14 ++++++++------
1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst b/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
index 1699b7f8e63a..285a84ae79de 100644
--- a/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
+++ b/Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
@@ -636,12 +636,14 @@ idea was not posted in a public forum. That said, if we diligently credit our
idea reporters, they will, hopefully, be inspired to help us again in the
future.
-A Fixes: tag indicates that the patch fixes an issue in a previous commit. It
-is used to make it easy to determine where a bug originated, which can help
-review a bug fix. This tag also assists the stable kernel team in determining
-which stable kernel versions should receive your fix. This is the preferred
-method for indicating a bug fixed by the patch. See :ref:`describe_changes`
-for more details.
+A Fixes: tag indicates that the patch fixes a "bug". i.e.: a logic defect or
+regression in a previous commit. A Fixes: tag should not be used to indicate
+that a previous commit had some trivial defect in spelling in the commit log or
+some whitespace defect. The Fixes: tag is used to make it easy to determine
+where a bug originated, which can help review a bug fix. The Fixes: tag also
+assists the stable kernel team in determining which stable kernel versions
+should receive your fix. This is the preferred method for indicating a bug is
+fixed by the patch. See :ref:`describe_changes` for more details.
.. _the_canonical_patch_format:
