On Tue, 2017-07-18 at 11:24 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: > On Tue, Jul 18, 2017 at 8:51 AM, Doug Ledford <dledford@xxxxxxxxxx> > wrote: > > > > This is the first round of fixes for the -rc cycle. > > Pulled. However, I want to complain (again!) about bad merge commits. > > You're not the only one doing this, so this is not rdma-specific, but > I complain when I notice. > > There's a merge commit in there that has no explanation. This is the > totality of the commit message: > > Merge tag 'v4.13-rc1' into k.o/for-4.13-rc > > Linux v4.13-rc1 > > and I want to point out that there is *nothing* there that explains > why that merge exists. Fair enough. My branch still had two unpulled commits and was based on v4.12-rc3. But, you had already taken the SELinux/RDMA patches through the SELinux tree during this merge window, and two of the fix patches in my pull request would have produced conflicts for you if I didn't merge up to a common ancestor that had the SELinux/RDMA patches prior to applying those patches to my tree (these two in particular): f7c8f2e9ddc7 IB/uverbs: Make use of ib_modify_qp variant to avoid resolving DMAC a512c2fbef9c IB/core: Introduce modify QP operation with udata So I didn't want to abandon the branch with those commits in them, hence I did the forward merge and then proceeded with applying the commits for you to pull. > A merge? There *has* to be an explanation for why the merge exists. > What problem did that merge fix? Why was it done in the first palce? > > And if the only reason for that merge is "sync with upstream", then > no, that is not a sufficient reason. It has to have an actual real > reason, and it needs to be stated. Does this apply to the for-next area as well? In particular, I was planning on changing my process so that my for-next branch would regularly sync with tagged rc releases (I believe this is what Dave Miller does with his tree, or else he's getting updates to later -rcs by pulling from other people, but I know I see merge commits for your -rc releases in his history when I go scanning through it). This is how I intended to get the -rc fixes I send you into my for-next area so that for-next development is against the RDMA subsystem as it exists including the -rc fixes, and not as it existed when I branched off the for-next branch. I can merge my -rc branch instead if that is preferred, and only merge the -rcs if I need one for a specific out-of- RDMA area feature for building against. -- Doug Ledford <dledford@xxxxxxxxxx> GPG KeyID: B826A3330E572FDD Key fingerprint = AE6B 1BDA 122B 23B4 265B 1274 B826 A333 0E57 2FDD -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-rdma" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html