Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] The place of AI code review in the Linux Kernel process

On Fri, 17 Jul 2026 at 18:09, Laurent Pinchart
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > And then Y doesn't get done, and maybe X doesn't get done _either_,
> > just because of some unrelated issue was pointed out as part of the
> > discussion.
>
> It has caused and still causes friction, but I wouldn't dismiss it
> entirely. I have seen multiple maintainers, including myself, ask for
> yak shaving in ways that worked reasonably well. The key was to judge
> how much yak shaving is reasonable (and the answer is invariably less
> than a maintainer would wish for), and not making it mandatory.

I agree that it sometimes works, and can even work well - a maintainer
suggestion of "if you did this, that will clean things up" can even be
a welcome thing - particularly when it is relevant to the original
series and not just an incidental tangential thing.

But we've also had maintainers that tried to get unrelated work done
by making it a requirement for the subsystem, and pushed it way too
hard, and it only resulted in problems.

So it *can* work, but as you say, it requires social skills and the
ability to judge whether it's appropriate.

And I think that when there is AI review, people are less likely to
see it as a positive thing when the AI then points out pre-existing
problems.

So if the AI then also gives a solution to the problem, I think people
will appreciate the process more.

                  Linus