Linux

"I have not pulled this, I'm annoyed by having to even look at this, and if you actually expect me to pull this I want a real explanation and not a useless link," Linus Torvalds posted Friday on the Linux kernel mailing list. Phoronix explains: It's become a common occurrence seeing "Link: " tags within Git commits for the Linux kernel that point to the latest Linux kernel mailing list patches of the same patch... Linus Torvalds has had enough and will be more strict against accepting pull requests that have link tags of no value. He commented yesterday on a block pull request that he pulled and then backed out of: "And dammit, this commit has that promising 'Link:' argument that I hoped would explain why this pointless commit exists, but AS ALWAYS that link only wasted my time by pointing to the same damn information that was already there. I was hoping that it would point to some oops report or something that would explain why my initial reaction was wrong. "Stop this garbage already. Stop adding pointless Link arguments that waste people's time. Add the link if it has *ADDITIONAL* information.... "Yes, I'm grumpy. I feel like my main job — really my only job — is to try to make sense of pull requests, and that's why I absolutely detest these things that are automatically added and only make my job harder." A longer discussion ensued... Torvalds: [A] "perfect" model might be to actually have some kind of automation of "unless there was actual discussion about it". But I feel such a model might be much too complicated, unless somebody *wants* to explore using AI because their job description says "Look for actual useful AI uses". In today's tech world, I assume such job descriptions do exist. Sigh... Torvalds: I do think it makes sense for patch series that (a) are more than a small handful of patches and (b) have some real "story" to them (ie a cover letter that actually explains some higher-level issues)... Torvalds also had two responses to a poster who'd said "IMHO it's better to have a Link and it _potentially_ being useful than not to have it and then need to search around for it." Torvalds: No. Really. The issue is "potentially — but very likely not — useful" vs "I HIT THIS TEN+ TIMES EVERY SINGLE F%^& RELEASE". There is just no comparison. I have literally *never* found the original submission email to be useful, and I'm tired of the "potentially useful" argument that has nothing to back it up with. It's literally magical thinking of "in some alternate universe, pigs can fly, and that link might be useful" Torvalds: And just to clarify: the hurt is real. It's not just the disappointment. It's the wasted effort of following a link and having to then realize that there's nothing useful there. Those links *literally* double the effort for me when I try to be careful about patches... The cost is real. The cost is something I've complained about before... Yes, it's literally free to you to add this cost. No, *YOU* don't see the cost, and you think it is helpful. It's not. It's the opposite of helpful. So I want commit messages to be relevant and explain what is going on, and I want them to NOT WASTE MY TIME. And I also don't want to ignore links that are actually *useful* and give background information. Is that really too much to ask for? Torvalds points out he's brought this up four times before — once in 2022. Torvalds: I'm a bit frustrated, exactly because this _has_ been going on for years. It's not a new peeve. And I don't think we have a good central place for that kind of "don't do this". Yes, there's the maintainer summit, but that's a pretty limited set of people. I guess I could mention it in my release notes, but I don't know who actually reads those either.. So I end up just complaining when I see it.