On 9/22/2019 10:52 AM, Russell King - ARM Linux admin wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 22, 2019 at 06:53:35PM +0200, Andrew Lunn wrote:
>> On Sun, Sep 22, 2019 at 11:59:32AM +0100, Russell King - ARM Linux admin
>> wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> tinywrkb, please can you test this series to ensure that it fixes
>>> your problem - the previous version has turned out to be a non-starter
>>> as it introduces more problems, thanks!
>>>
>>> The following series attempts to address an issue spotted by tinywrkb
>>> with the AR8035 on the Cubox-i2 in a situation where the PHY downgrades
>>> the negotiated link.
>>
>> Hi Russell
>>
>> This all looks sensible.
>>
>> One things we need to be careful of, is this is for net and so stable.
>
> Since the regression was introduced in 5.1, it should be backported
> to stable trees.
>
>> But only some of the patches have fixes-tags. I don't know if we
>> should add fixes tags to all the patches, just to give back porters a
>> hint that they are all needed? It won't compile without the patches,
>> so at least it fails safe.
>
> I only put Fixes: tags on patches that are actually fixing something.
> Quoting submitting-patches.rst:
>
> A Fixes: tag indicates that the patch fixes an issue in a previous
> commit.
>
> Since the preceding two patches are just preparing for the fix, and
> not actually fixing an issue in themselves, it seems wrong to add a
> Fixes: tag for them. However, mentioning it in the commit message
> for the patch that does fix the issue is probably worth it. Thanks.
>
This is not a criticism of your patch series, which is fine.
I believe Andrew's angle is that if you have fixes that rely on
non-functional changes, then the fixes cannot be back ported as a
standalone patch set towards specific stable trees. This means that
people who do care about such fixes may have to come up with a slightly
different fix for earlier kernels affected by those bugs, such fixes
would not rely on patch #2 and #3 in this series and open code
phy_resolve_aneg() and genphy_read_lpa() within the at803x.c PHY driver.
--
Florian
