Re: RFC: Starting a stable kernel series off the 2.6 kernel

Dave Jones
2005-12-03T21:13:48Z

On Sat, Dec 03, 2005 at 09:59:11PM +0100, Lars Marowsky-Bree wrote:
> On 2005-12-03T14:56:08, Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> wrote:
>
> > The current kernel development model is pretty good for people who
> > always want to use or offer their costumers the maximum amount of the
> > latest bugs^Wfeatures without having to resort on additional patches for
> > them.
> >
> > Problems of the current development model from a user's point of view
> > are:
> > - many regressions in every new release
> > - kernel updates often require updates for the kernel-related userspace
> > (e.g. for udev or the pcmcia tools switch)
>
> Your problem statement is correct, but you're fixing the symptoms, not
> the cause.
>
> What we need is an easier way for users to pull in kernel updates with
> the matching kernel-related user-space.
>
> This is provided, though with some lag, by Fedora, openSUSE, Debian
> testing, dare I say gentoo and others.
>
> The right way to address this is to work with the distribution of your
> choice to make these updates available faster.

The big problem is though that we don't typically find out that
we've regressed until after a kernel update is in the end-users hands.

In many cases, submitters of changes know that things are going
to break. Maybe we need a policy that says changes requiring userspace updates
need to be clearly documented in the mails Linus gets (Especially if its
a git pull request), so that when the next point release gets released,
Linus can put a section in the announcement detailing what bits
of userspace are needed to be updated.

It still isn't to solve the problem of regressions in drivers, but
that's a problem that's not easily solvable.

Dave