Kernel tooling will stop copying every patch to LKML

The script most kernel developers use to decide who should receive a patch will stop adding the linux-kernel mailing list to every submission. Andrew Morton has queued the change for the 7.4 release-candidate hotfixes after Konstantin Ryabitsev, of the Linux Foundation, warned that the list's volume had become untenable.

A catch-all entry in the kernel's maintainer database matches every file in the tree. The get_maintainer tool therefore suggested linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org even when a subsystem already had its own list. In the week of October 1 to 7, 2026, LKML carried 13,641 messages, about 1,950 a day. Ryabitsev wrote that 90 percent of those were also sent to at least one other list. With roughly 2,100 subscribers, that was about 29 million deliveries in a week for LKML alone.

He tied the surge to patches produced with AI tooling, which he said had driven delivery queues sharply higher. Without the change, he wrote, list operators "will have to start force-unsubscribing addresses that do not show any developer activity or use similar drastic measures." The issue came up at the 2026 Maintainer Summit, where the consensus was that always including linux-kernel was never the intent.

Under the new behavior, the catch-all is used only when no other matching maintainer section would actually produce a mailing list for the files being changed. Subscribers-only lists, and moderated lists when the tool is told to skip them, do not count, so a patch still reaches at least one public list. Files with no subsystem list still go to LKML.

The submission guide, which currently tells developers to send every patch to LKML by default, will describe the list as a last resort. Petr Pavlu suggested that documentation change, and Randy Dunlap acknowledged it. Joe Perches asked Morton to take the patches upstream; Morton said he had added them to the hotfix queue.

A separate proposal for a new list that would still carry every patch, for people who want to follow all kernel development, was left for later. Translated copies of the submission guide still tell readers to mail every patch to LKML and will need their own updates.