Use of "Fixes" tag for trivial fixes

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Hi Greg, Sasha,

First, thank you for your great job maintaining the stable versions!

In our work related to MPTCP, we were wondering if we should/can add the
"Fixes" tag for trivial/stable fixes.

It is certainly easier to explain that with an example: we have a small
patch [1] to stop exposing a function that is only used from one .c file
and declared there too. So the signature is removed from the .h file and
the 'static' keyword is added in the .c file. It should have been like
that since the introduction of this function.

We don't know if we can/should add the "Fixes" tag for such cases: the
"mistake" has been introduced by one specific commit so we could add the
"Fixes" tag but we also know patches with such tags are certainly going
to be automatically backported. The patch is not really fixing a bug,
more a "cleaning". Does it make sense to backport these patches then?

On one hand, we might think it would be interesting to backport it to
reduce the differences with the last version: if the idea is to backport
simple fixes to ease future and maybe more complex backports later. But
on the other hand, it is more work for you to backport it: if the idea
is to backport only actual bug-fix patches. So what is the preferred policy?

We didn't find anything in the doc on "when not to add the 'Fixes' tag"
but we know the Stable Kernel Rules doc mentions to avoid trivial fixes.
Maybe this patch is not "trivial", it is not really a bug-fix either but
that's not the real question here, more: does this rule -- and other
ones from Stable Kernel doc -- apply to the "Fixes" tag as well?

Cheers,
Matt

[1]
https://lore.kernel.org/mptcp/d40a139-9f3b-974d-31f-faa28099c527@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/T/
-- 
Tessares | Belgium | Hybrid Access Solutions
www.tessares.net



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