Re: RFD: Kernel release numbering

Alan Cox
2005-03-04T11:02:06Z

On Gwe, 2005-03-04 at 05:34, Andrew Morton wrote:
> Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com> wrote:
> This means that for patches which didn't come through -mm, their first
> exposure in a public tree will be when they pop up in our "most stable"
> tree. That's backwards.

Its irrelevant. Most of the "must fix" items are security. They don't
have a convenient testing life cycle. Many of the others are things that
need a prompt fix and the same problem applies.

After all if it was in -mm then someone knew about it and would have
said "this has to make base before its released"

> However it should be manageable, as long as linux-release is constrained to
> obviously-correct and its-no-more-broken-now-than-it-used-to-be patches.

And occasionally it will be wrong. It happens. Linus released 2.4.15,
I've released -ac patches and stuff that needed immediate "oh duh, try
the next one"
results. The important thing is that there is a base 'stable' release
that is almost always stable. That is as good as you'll get.

Alan