On Fri, 15 Mar 2013 18:37:12 +0100 Nicolas Ferre [off-list ref] wrote:

On some revisions of AT91 SoCs, the RTC IMR register is not working.
Instead of elaborating a workaround for that specific SoC or IP version,
we simply use a software variable to store the Interrupt Mask Register and
modify it for each enabling/disabling of an interrupt. The overhead of this
is negligible anyway.

This description doesn't really allow me or others to work out whether
the fix should be included in 3.9 or backported into earlier kernels.

So please, when fixing a bug do include a full description of the
user-visible effects of that bug.  And your opinion regarding the
-mainline and -stable decision is always useful.