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

[Dan Williams]

On Wed, Jul 5, 2017 at 9:48 AM, Guenter Roeck <linux at roeck-us.net> wrote:
> 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.

Agreed, this shouldn't be a new burden for maintainers, this should be
a contribution path for new kernel developers. Go beyond our standard
"fix a bug" advice, which is a great advice, and also recommend
"backstop a regression with a unit test".