On Sun, Jul 08, 2018 at 08:33:37PM +1000, Michael Ellerman wrote: > Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > * Michael Ellerman <mpe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > >> > On Tue, Jul 03, 2018 at 01:36:43PM +0200, Vlastimil Babka wrote: > >> >> On 06/18/2018 10:13 AM, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote: > >> >> > 4.16-stable review patch. If anyone has any objections, please let me know. > >> >> > >> >> So I was wondering, why backport such a considerable number of > >> >> *selftests* to stable, given the stable policy? Surely selftests don't > >> >> affect the kernel itself breaking for users? > >> > > >> > These came in as part of Sasha's "backport fixes" tool. It can't hurt > >> > to add selftest fixes/updates to stable kernels, as for some people, > >> > they only run the selftests for the specific kernel they are building. > >> > While others run selftests for the latest kernel on older kernels, both > >> > of which are valid ways of testing. > >> > >> I don't have a problem with these sort of patches being backported, but > >> it seems like Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.txt could use an > >> update? > >> > >> I honestly don't know what the rules are anymore. > > > > Self-tests are standalone tooling which help the testing of the kernel, and it > > makes sense to either update all of them, or none of them. > > Yes I know what selftests are. > > > Here it makes sense to update all of them, because if a self-test on a stable > > kernel shows a failure then a fix is probably missing from -stable, right? > > Usually, though it's not always that simple IME. > > But sure, I don't have a problem with updating selftests, I said that before. > > > Also note that self-test tooling *cannot possibly break the kernel*, because they > > are not used in the kernel build process, so the normally conservative backporting > > rules do not apply. > > Right. So stable-kernel-rules.txt could use an update to mention that. > > > My comment was less about this actual patch and more about the new > reality of patches being backported to stable based on Sasha's tooling, > which seems to be much more liberal than anything we've done previously. > > I don't generally have any objection to that process, though it possibly > could have been more widely announced. But, it would be good if > stable-kernel-rules.txt was updated to mention it. > > I've had several people ask me "hey my patch got backported to stable > but I didn't ask for it - is that OK, what's going on?" etc. Why didn't those people just ask us? To not do so is very strange, it's not like we are hard to find :) > I guess I should just send a patch to update it, but I don't really know > what it should say. I don't think it really needs any changes, as the selftests is just a corner case that is easily explained if anyone cares enough to actually ask :) thanks, greg k-h
