On Wed, Jul 30, 2025 at 11:11:43AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Jul 2025 at 19:46, Neeraj Upadhyay
> <neeraj.upadh...@kernel.org> wrote:
> >
> > This pull request contains the following branches:
> >
> > rcu-exp.23.07.2025 [..]
>
> I've pulled this, but I do have a request (or two, really)..
>
> The octopus merges look cool, but they have the problem that if there
> are subtle bugs introduced by interactions between branches, they are
> a pain to bisect. So in general, I advise people to avoid them.
>
> But the *real* thing I note is that merges are more subtle than normal
> commits in the first place, and octopus merges are subtler still - and
> your have no explanation at all outside of the 'merge X Y and Z into
> ABC'.
>
> Please write more of a commit message explaining what those branches
> *are* that you are merging.
>
> Which is the second part of the request: when you ask me to merge "the
> following branches", the branch names are basically line noise. I'm
> not in the least interested in seeing what the date of a branch is.
> That adds no value.
>
> So can you please instead describe the branches by what they do than
> by some internal branch name you used. I made up my own "names" for
> the sub-branches in the merge message, but it would be much nicer if
> you did it in the pull request.
>
> So, for example, I changed "rcu-exp.23.07.2025" to be "Expedited grace
> period", which seems to be what that branch name was cryptically
> trying to say.
Apologies! I missed the empty merge-commit commit log when reviewing
this pull request, and I should have spotted that. :-(
As it happens, I will be sending the pull request for the v6.18 merge
window, so I will stop doing my usual octopus merges (hey, they *were*
cool!) and instead merge each branch separately, with each merge's commit
log giving a synopsis of the commits in the branch being merged.
If you have a best-practice series of merges example in mind, could you
please point me at it?
Thanx, Paul
