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eed892da9c
This basically rewrites the 'Prioritize work on fixing regressions' section of Documentation/process/handling-regressions.rst for various reasons. Among them: some things were too demanding, some didn't align well with the usual workflows, and some apparently were not clear enough -- and of course a few things were missing that would be good to have in there. Linus for example recently stated that regressions introduced during the past year should be handled similarly to regressions from the current cycle, if it's a clear fix with no semantic subtlety. His exact wording[1] didn't fit well into the text structure, but the author tried to stick close to the apparent intention. It was a noble goal from the original author to state "[prevent situations that might force users to] continue running an outdated and thus potentially insecure kernel version for more than two weeks after a regression's culprit was identified"; this directly led to the goal "fix regression in mainline within one week, if the issue made it into a stable/longterm kernel", because the stable team needs time to pick up and prepare a new release. But apparently all that was a bit too demanding. That "one week" target for example doesn't align well with the usual habits of the subsystem maintainers, which normally send their fixes to Linus once a week; and it doesn't align too well with stable/longterm releases either, which often enter a -rc phase on Mondays or Tuesdays and then are released two to three days later. And asking developers to create, review, and mainline fixes within one week might be too much to ask for in general. Hence tone the general goal down to three weeks and use an approach that better aligns with the usual merging and release habits. While at it, also make the rules of thumb a bit easier to follow by grouping them by topic (e.g. generic things, timing, procedures, ...). Also add text for a few cases where recent discussions showed they need covering. Among them are multiple points that better explain the relations to stable and longterm kernels and the team that manages them; they and the group seperators are the primary reason why this whole section sadly grew somewhat in the rewrite. The group about those relations led to one addition the author came up with without any precedent from Linus: the text now tells developers to add a stable tag for any regression that made it into a proper mainline release during the past 12 months. This is meant to ensure the stable team will definitely notice any fixes for recent regressions. That includes those introduced shortly before a new mainline release and found right after it; without such a rule the stable team might miss the fix, which then would only reach users after weeks or months with later releases. Note, the aspect "Do not consider regressions from the current cycle as something that can wait till the cycle's end [...]" might look like an addition, but was kinda was in the old text as well -- but only indirectly. That apparently was too subtle, as many developers seem to assume waiting till the end of the cycle is fine (even for build fixes). In practice this was especially problematic when a cause of a regression made it into a proper release (either directly or through a backport). A revert performed by Linus shortly before the 6.3 release illustrated that[2], as the developer of the culprit had been willing to revert the culprit about three weeks earlier already -- but didn't do so when a fix came into sight and a maintainer suggested it can wait. Due to that the issue in the end plagued users of 6.2.y at least two weeks longer than necessary, as the fix in the end didn't become ready in time. This issue in fact could have been resolved one or two additional weeks earlier, if the developer had reverted the culprit shortly after it had been identified (which even the old version of the text suggest to do in such cases). [1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAHk-=wis_qQy4oDNynNKi5b7Qhosmxtoj1jxo5wmB6SRUwQUBQ@mail.gmail.com/ [2] https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAHk-=wgD98pmSK3ZyHk_d9kZ2bhgN6DuNZMAJaV0WTtbkf=RDw@mail.gmail.com/ CC: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> CC: Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> CC: Lukas Bulwahn <lukas.bulwahn@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info> Acked-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/6971680941a5b7b9cb0c2839c75b5cc4ddb2d162.1684139586.git.linux@leemhuis.info Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> |
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Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.