Re: RFD: Kernel release numbering

szonyi calin
2005-03-08T23:46:25Z

--- Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com> wrote:
> Greg KH wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 05:15:36PM -0800, Linus Torvalds
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > But when pressed about the issue of speed of development,
> rate of
> > change, feature increase, driver updates, and so on, no one
> else has any
> > clue of what to do. They respond with, "but only put
> bugfixes into a
> > stable release." My comeback is explaining how we handle
> lots of
> > different types of bugfixes, by api changes, real fixes, and
> driver
> > updates for new hardware. Sometimes these cause other bugs
> to happen,
> > or just get shaken out where they were previously hiding
> (acpi is a
> > great example of this issue.) In the end, they usually fall
> back on
> > muttering, "well, I'm just glad that I'm not a kernel
> developer..." and
> > back away.
>
> The pertinent question for a point release (2.6.X.Y) would
> simply be
> "does a 2.6.11 user really need this fix?"
>

no. If something is not working in 2.6.11 i will switch to
2.6.10 ;-) and _maybe_ report a bug

>
> > Like I previously said, I think we're doing a great job.
> The current
> > -mm staging area could use some more testers to help weed
> out the real
> > issues, and we could do "real" releases a bit faster than
> every 2 months
> > or so. But other than that, we have adapted over the years
> to handle
> > this extremely high rate of change in a pretty sane manner.
>
> I think Linus's "even/odd" proposal is an admission that 2.6.X
> releases
> need some important fixes after it hits kernel.org.
>
> Otherwise 2.6.X is simply a constantly indeterminent state.
>

Let me tell you what i understood from this thread:
2.6.12 "almost stable"
2.6.13 devel (new drivers,fixes and stuff -- may be broken)
2.6.14 (based on 2.6.13) tries to became stable again
2.6.15 also devel (see above)
2.6.16 (based on 2.6.15) also tries to became stable again

So we will _want_ to have a stable kernel (like 2.4 now) but
this will never happen (see above)

> We need to serve users, not just make life easier for kernel
> developers ;-)
>

You said it. Hopefully you will make our life easier and we
(as testers) will make your's.

> Jeff
>

--
A mouse is a device used to point at
the xterm you want to type in.
Kim Alm on a.s.r.

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