Re: [PATCH v3 0/9] Media Controller capture driver for DM365

Dan Carpenter
2012-11-28T21:30:37Z

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 08:30:04PM +0100, Sylwester Nawrocki wrote:
> On 11/28/2012 01:22 PM, Dan Carpenter wrote:
> > In the end this is just a driver, and I don't especially care. But
> > it's like not just this one which makes me frustrated. I really
> > believe in linux-next and I think everything should spend a couple
> > weeks there before being merged.
>
> Couple of weeks in linux-next plus a couple of weeks of final patch
> series version awaiting to being reviewed and picked up by a maintainer
> makes almost entire kernel development cycle. These are huge additional
> delays, especially in the embedded world. Things like these certainly
> aren't encouraging for moving over from out-of-tree to the mainline
> development process. And in this case we are talking only about merging
> driver to the staging tree...

Yeah. A couple weeks is probably too long. But I think a week is
totally reasonable.

You have the process wrong. The maintainer reviews it first, merges
it into his -next git tree. It sits in linux-next for a bit. The
merge window opens up. It is merged. It gets tested for 3 months.
It is released.

It should work as a continuous even flow. It shouldn't be a rush to
submit drivers right before the merge window opens. It's not hard,
you can submit a driver to linux-next at any time. It magically
flows through the process and is released some months later.

It does suck to add a 3 month delay for people who miss the cut off.
Don't wait until the last minute. In the embedded world you can
use git cherry-pick to get the driver from linux-next.

regards,
dan carpenter