Re: Default cache_hot_time value back to 10ms

[Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>]

Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
> Any thoughts about making -rc's into -pre's, and doing real -rc's?

I think what we have is OK.  The idea is that once 2.6.9 is released we
merge up all the well-tested code which is sitting in various trees and has
been under test for a few weeks.  As soon as all that well-tested code is
merged, we go into -rc.  So we're pipelining the development of 2.6.10 code
with the stabilisation of 2.6.9.

If someone goes and develops *new* code after the release of, say, 2.6.9
then tough tittie, it's too late for 2.6.9: we don't want new code - we
want old-n-tested code.  So your typed-in-after-2.6.9 code goes into
2.6.11.

That's the theory anyway.  If it means that it takes a long time to get
code into the kernel.org tree, well, that's a cost.  That latency may be
high but the bandwidth is pretty good.

There are exceptions of course.  Completely new
drivers/filesystems/architectures can go in any old time becasue they won't
break existing setups.  Although I do tend to hold back on even these in
the (probably overoptimistic) hope that people will then concentrate on
mainline bug fixing and testing.

>  It would have caught the NFS bug that made 2.6.8.1, and probably
>  the cd burning problems... Or is Linus' patching finger just too
>  itchy?

uh, let's say that incident was "proof by counter example".