Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Coping with the new-developer flood

On Fri, 2026-08-07 at 15:40 +0300, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 07, 2026 at 08:28:08AM -0400, James Bottomley wrote:
[...]
> > There are two reasons not to insist too rigidly on base commit:
> > firstly because a lot of series are invariant (they apply to any
> > tree because there's been no commits in the areas patched)
> 
> Then the author could pick any base commit available in Linus' tree
> the relevant subsystem tree (typically an upstream release of the
> next branch of the subsystem). Would that have any drawback compared
> to not specifying any base commit at all ?

It's just pointless hassle given the maintainer workflow is ignore the
base commit and do git (or b4) am on the current branch and only if
that rejects either try and upport based on the base commit or ask for
a respin (the latter being the most common course of action).

> > and secondly because the series has a dependency on another posted
> > but not yet applied patch series (i.e. no published base commit at
> > all).  At least make it a Maintainer decision whether to insist on
> > base commit or not.
> 
> Isn't that what prerequisite-patch-id is for ?

Dear god, absolutely not.  I can't match a patch hash to a series, I
want the lore link of the prerequisite series in the cover letter.

Regards,

James