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bp3tk0vJonathan Corbet
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Documentation/submitting-patches: Add blurb about backtraces in commit messages
Document that backtraces in commit messages should be trimmed down to the useful information only. This has been carved out from a tip subsystem handbook patchset by Thomas Gleixner: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/[email protected] and incorporates follow-on comments. Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov <[email protected]> Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <[email protected]>
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Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst

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@@ -684,6 +684,26 @@ generates appropriate diffstats by default.)
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See more details on the proper patch format in the following
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references.
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Backtraces in commit mesages
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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Backtraces help document the call chain leading to a problem. However,
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not all backtraces are helpful. For example, early boot call chains are
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unique and obvious. Copying the full dmesg output verbatim, however,
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adds distracting information like timestamps, module lists, register and
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stack dumps.
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Therefore, the most useful backtraces should distill the relevant
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information from the dump, which makes it easier to focus on the real
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issue. Here is an example of a well-trimmed backtrace::
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unchecked MSR access error: WRMSR to 0xd51 (tried to write 0x0000000000000064)
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at rIP: 0xffffffffae059994 (native_write_msr+0x4/0x20)
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Call Trace:
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mba_wrmsr
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update_domains
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rdtgroup_mkdir
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.. _explicit_in_reply_to:
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Explicit In-Reply-To headers

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