Hello Konstantin. I notice that you have made back-merge in ntfs3 git repo in github. This should not be done without good reason and there is none in this case. If there is reason you should also write good merge commit for it. As you are just coming to maintener I will write little info about how this stuff works. I'm not maintainer, but I have study about how kernel is maintained. Here is link which you can read about back-merges. If you have any questions you can always ask. 01.org/linuxgraphics/gfx-docs/drm/maintainer/rebasing-and-merging.html#merging-from-sibling-or-upstream-trees You could also go check some other trees how they do it. Usually there is next/master/main/for-next which will be repo which will contain stuff for next-merge window. This is usually based on rc1, rc2, rc3 depending when you put first patches to next merge window. As you based your branch top of the rc5. https://git.kernel.org/?s=idle Because your master branch is for next you could have rebased your branch top of the rc7 if you want to but that is kinda pointless. You could always fix little mistakes in next branch with rebase, but you should propably info this action to ntfs3 mailing list. The idea is that this repo has very clean history always when it get merged to Linus tree. Also developers who work with ntfs3 can see everything in one eye. Example take a look Ext4 dev (for-next) branch https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tytso/ext4.git/log/?h=dev You see that this is based on rc2. Theodore will create pull-request based on this when he creates pull-request. Very clean history and no back-merges. If you wonder how should you do development then if you can't back merge. You should do develompent in linux-next branch. This way you always know if others break something reletad to ntfs3. Then you check who was it and send email about it and you solve it together. It can be tricky some times who will take which patches but help is given if you ask. There is lot of small info what I did not include here and hopefully everything is correct. Hopefully you will also in near future respond patches which are sent to you. There is already quite lot. If you need any help how to maintainer should handle those I can assisntant you best I can. There will be example little bit work howto make all fixes tags right because you will have to rebase your current commits as they do not have example reviewed-tags. I also CC linux-next maintainer as he knows this stuff and can say if I say something wrong. And I feel like new maintainer can have little help from gurus. Kari Argillander
