Re: RFD: Kernel release numbering

Greg KH
2005-03-03T20:34:22Z

On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 02:35:29PM -0500, Sean wrote:
> On Thu, March 3, 2005 12:53 pm, Linus Torvalds said:
> > On Thu, 3 Mar 2005, Jens Axboe wrote:
> >>
> >> Why should there be one? One of the things I like about this concept is
> >> that it's just a moving tree. There could be daily snapshots like the
> >> -bkX "releases" of Linus's tree, if there are changes from the day
> >> before. It means (hopefully) that no one will "wait for x.y.z.2 because
> >> that is really stable".
> >
> > Exactly. Th ewhole point of this tree is that there shouldn't be anything
> > questionable in it. All the patches are independent, and they are all
> > trivial and small.
> >
> > Which is not to say there couldn't be regressions even from trivial and
> > small patches, and yes, there will be an outcry when there is, but we're
> > talking minimizing the risk, not making it impossible.
> >
>
> Wait a second though, this tree will be branched from the development
> mainline. So it will contain many patches that entered with less
> testing.

Less testing than what? Remember, we don't have a "test suite" for the
kernel, no matter how much propaganda osdl likes to emit :)

> What will be the policy for dealing with regressions relative
> to the previous $sucker release caused by huge patches that entered via
> the development tree? Is reverting them prohibited because of the patch
> size?

We'll deal with them as they come, on a case-by-case basis. Acceptable?

thanks,

greg k-h