On Wed, Dec 02, 2020 at 06:41:43PM +0100, Miklos Szeredi wrote:

On Wed, Dec 2, 2020 at 5:24 PM David Howells [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Miklos Szeredi [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Stable cc also?

Cc: <redacted> # 5.8

That seems to be unnecessary, provided there's a Fixes: tag.

Is it?

Fixes: means it fixes a patch, Cc: stable means it needs to be
included in stable kernels.  The two are not necessarily the same.

Greg?

You are correct.  cc: stable, as is documented in
    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/stable-kernel-rules.html
ensures that the patch will get merged into the stable tree.

Fixes: is independent of it.  It's great to have for stable patches so
that I know how far back to backport patches.

We do scan all commits for Fixes: tags that do not have cc: stable, and
try to pick them up when we can and have the time to do so.  But it's
not guaranteed at all that this will happen.

I don't know why people keep getting confused about this, we don't
document the "Fixes: means it goes to stable" anywhere...

thanks,

greg k-h