Which tree to track: linux-next or staging?

[Konstantin Ryabitsev]

On Sat, Mar 09, 2024 at 03:49:15PM +0100, Jonathan Bergh wrote:
> I have had the opportunity to submit a few patches, which has been
> really fun. However, a while back i submitted patches for fixes that i
> realised after had already been patched in GregKH tree ... and i
> realised i had been developing against Linus's master branch, and not
> linux-next.
> 
> But my question is, is it better to develop against linux-next or in
> newbies cases, one of GregKH's (staging) branches? Maybe
> staging/master or staging/staging-next?

There is no hard and fast rule about it, but in general:

- if you are closely working with a particular subsystem, the best course of
  action is to develop against the indicated tree/branch (e.g. see T: entries
  in the MAINTAINERS file); you should rebase your series to the latest before
  sending it off to the maintainer
- if you are an occasional contributor, you should use either the latest next
  tag for submitting your patches, or the latest mainline tag
- if you are sending a one-off patch, basing it off of the latest mainline tag
  is just fine

With any of these approaches you *will* occasionally have a mid-air collision
with someone else -- it's just a reality when it comes to distributed
workflows.

-K