Re: New (now current development process)

[Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk>]

On Sun, Oct 30, 2005 at 02:55:33PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> >
> >  That's fine if you have the hardware to be able to debug these issues.
> 
> Most driver bugs cannot be reproduced by the developer.  Almost by
> definition: if the patch had caused problems on the developer's machine, he
> wouldn't have shipped it.
> 
> This is why we have this wonderful group of long-suffering people who
> download and test development kernels for us, and who take the time to
> report defects.
> 
> Yes, it's painful to get into a long-range debugging session, sending debug
> patches, twelve-hour turnaround, etc.  But what alternative have we?

However, it helps if you have a grasp of technologies like ACPI,
IO-APICs, APICs, PCI IRQ routing for x86 problems.  Since I don't
work in the x86 field, I have _zero_ knowledge of such things
because they just don't apply when working on ARM.

That makes debugging x86 problems a nightmare.  Remember I gave
up with trying to sort out peoples PCMCIA problems?

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:  2.6 Serial core