On Wednesday 18 April 2012, Dan Carpenter wrote:

I'm not sure I understand.  I thought everyone used the develop
against linux-next and backport the fixes model.  Are we going to
try merge these in 3.4?  It will still spend some time in linux-next
before we submit it, right?

Correct, but the point is that you cannot add patches on top of -next
and have them included in a future -next version, because they never
merge cleanly.

The ideal workflow is:

1. develop on -rc
2. merge with latest -next, test and make sure it works there
3. submit for review against -rc
4. have patches included in -next once reviewed, but based on -rc
5. when merge window opens, have patches sent for upstream inclusion

The last two steps are slightly different for your own subsystem
compared to someone else's subsystem: In this case, Roland is the
author and sends the patches to me to have them included in -next
and I send them to Linus in the next merge window.

	Arnd