Re: The direction linux is taking

Horst von Brand
2002-01-01T01:32:47Z

Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> said:

[...]

> We have lots of commercial customers using BK on the Linux kernel, they
> are doing embedded this and that. The rate of change that they make is
> much greater than the rate of change made in the Linus maintained tree.
> I'm not saying it's good or bad, it's just different. I can say that
> merging is a huge issue in commercial shops. It's interesting to hear
> that it is not in Linux.

Hummm... I guess this is because yoiu see new (development, pre, ...)
kernels each few days. Alan said he gets mosly line shifts (==
non-overlapping patches, or "people should be talking to each other").
Maybe due to the rapid version turnover? Maybe most of the merging is being
done by the posters themselves during development, as Ye Kernel Gods refuse
to do it for them?

I'm surprised that commercial shops see much merging. I'd assume they have
direct access to the up-to-the-minute source, so _less_ merging should be
necesary. Or they are (over)confident in their tools, and just work on
stale sources?

> Some sociology guy with a CS background should do a study on this and
> explore the differences. Is fast change better? Is slow change better?

I think the difference lies elsewhere.
--
Horst von Brand vonbrand@sleipnir.valparaiso.cl
Casilla 9G, Vin~a del Mar, Chile +56 32 672616