[Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] & [TECH TOPIC] Improve regression tracking

[Guenter Roeck]

On 07/05/2017 08:27 AM, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Jul 2017 08:16:33 -0700
> Guenter Roeck <linux at roeck-us.net> wrote:
[ ... ]
>>
>> If we start shaming people for not providing unit tests, all we'll accomplish is
>> that people will stop providing bug fixes.
> 
> I need to be clearer on this. What I meant was, if there's a bug
> where someone has a test that easily reproduces the bug, then if
> there's not a test added to selftests for said bug, then we should
> shame those into doing so.
> 

I don't think that public shaming of kernel developers is going to work
any better than public shaming of children or teenagers.

Maybe a friendlier approach would be more useful ?

If a test to reproduce a problem exists, it might be more beneficial to suggest
to the patch submitter that it would be great if that test would be submitted
as unit test instead of shaming that person for not doing so. Acknowledging and
praising kselftest submissions might help more than shaming for non-submissions.

> A bug that is found by inspection or hard to reproduce test cases are
> not applicable, as they don't have tests that can show a regression.
> 

My concern would be that once the shaming starts, it won't stop.

Guenter