Hi, please help me understand some general practices involved in kernel development. Specifically, I'm interested in how patches are included or reverted in different kernel versions.
Let's consider a practical example, the history of patch "drm/i915/execlists: Reset RING registers upon resume" [1]. This patch was committed 641 commits after version 4.8-rc2: $ git describe bafb2f7d4755bf1571bd5e9a03b97f3fc4fe69ae v4.8-rc2-641-gbafb2f7d4755 So I would expect to find it in version 4.8, which is the stable, final release of v4.8, following all the release canditates. However, if I search for the tag that follows (and hence contains) that commit, I do not find version 4.8, nor version 4.9, but 4.10: $ git describe --contains bafb2f7d4755bf1571bd5e9a03b97f3fc4fe69ae v4.10-rc1~154^2~44^2~178 Why? Why not v4.8-rc3? This means that the patch has been included neither in v4.8 nor in v4.9, but only in version 4.10-rc1, right? Why so much time was needed, considering it was the 621st commit on top ov v4.8-rc2? Another thing that confuses me is the following. In fact that patch ended up in v4.9.9 [2]. If my reasoning above is correct, it was backported from v4.10, right? Then some problems were reported, and it was reverted in v4.9.23 with commit 0ee72d8f9b8e17b8e4ccfebc7a25cbc2d395cd6a [3]. (What led to the decision of reverting it is explained in [4] and [5]). So my question now is--what version contains this patch? Is it true that I find it in v4.10? Stretch currently provides kernel version 4.9.30: $ uname -v #1 SMP Debian 4.9.30-2+deb9u2 (2017-06-26) Since v4.9.30 follows v4.9.23, the patch is not be included in Stretch's kernel, so this explains why I'm experiencing the bug addressed by this patch. Thanks for your help. [1] https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/patch/111587/ [2] https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/ChangeLog-4.9.9 [3] https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/ChangeLog-4.9.23 [4] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=100221#c10 [5] http://mid.mail-archive.com/1489443835.5568.7.camel@mailbox.org -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Sent from my brain using neurons fueled by glucose. ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ ⠈⠳⣄
