Re: RFD: Kernel release numbering

Ed Tomlinson
2005-03-03T13:13:30Z

On Wednesday 02 March 2005 22:37, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2 Mar 2005, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> >
> > If we want a calming period, we need to do development like 2.4.x is
> > done today. It's sane, understandable and it works.
>
> No. It's insane, and the only reason it works is that 2.4.x is a totally
> different animal. Namely it doesn't have the kind of active development AT
> ALL any more. It _only_ has the "even" number kind of things, and quite
> frankly, even those are a lot less than 2.6.x has.
>
> > 2.6.x-pre: bugfixes and features
> > 2.6.x-rc: bugfixes only
>
> And the reason it does _not_ work is that all the people we want testing
> sure as _hell_ won't be testing -rc versions.
>
> That's the whole point here, at least to me. I want to have people test
> things out, but it doesn't matter how many -rc kernels I'd do, it just
> won't happen. It's not a "real release".
>
> In contrast, making it a real release, and making it clear that it's a
> release in its own right, might actually get people to use it.

It seems to me that the problem is not the numbering scheme. We _will_
experience the same issues no mater what scheme we use... The way I see
it is that we need a way to tell how much testing a given release has had.
I would suggest an opt outable scheme that records boot (via an email
for instance) and asks for comments after a day or two. With this sort of
method we would _know_ just how much testing is done. We eventually
could start to relate the amount of testing to just how stable the kernel
will be.

Comments
Ed Tomlinson