From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S264231AbTFKUCY (ORCPT ); Wed, 11 Jun 2003 16:02:24 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S264186AbTFKUCK (ORCPT ); Wed, 11 Jun 2003 16:02:10 -0400 Received: from dsl092-053-140.phl1.dsl.speakeasy.net ([66.92.53.140]:5534 "EHLO grelber.thyrsus.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S264231AbTFKUBy (ORCPT ); Wed, 11 Jun 2003 16:01:54 -0400 From: Rob Landley Reply-To: rob@landley.net To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] Documentation/SendingPatches [2 of 2]. Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 16:18:10 -0400 User-Agent: KMail/1.5 Cc: torvalds@transmeta.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200306111618.10329.rob@landley.net> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org The bit about log rolling. --- linux-new/Documentation/SubmittingPatches 2003-06-11 15:54:29.000000000 -0400 +++ linux-new/Documentation/SubmittingPatches2 2003-06-11 15:54:06.000000000 -0400 @@ -92,6 +92,16 @@ complete, that is OK. Simply note "this patch depends on patch X" in your patch description. +In politics, there's a concept called "log rolling", where unrelated +amendments are bundled together so that changes people want grease the +way for changes they don't. Do not do this. It's annoying. + +In coding, this sort of thing can be very subtle, such as performance increases +that help your new version perform as well as the original while doing more +work, but which could also have been applied to the original making it even +faster. The linux-kernel guys are very good at taking the chocolate coating +and leaving the pill behind. This can be very frustrating to developers, but +it's one of the big reasons open source produces such excellent results. 4) Select e-mail destination.