Enough with the ad-hoc naming schemes, please

Enough with the ad-hoc naming schemes, please

[Matt Mackall]

Dear Linus,

I can't help but notice you've broken all the tools that rely on a
stable naming scheme TWICE in the span of LESS THAN ONE POINT RELEASE.

In both cases, this could have been avoided by using Marcello's 2.4
naming scheme. It's very simple: when you think something is "final",
you call it a "release candidate" and tag it "-rcX". If it works out,
you rename it _unmodified_ and everyone can trust that it hasn't
broken again in the interval. If it's not "final" and you're accepting
more than bugfixes, you call it a "pre-release" and tag it "-pre".
Then developers and testers and automated tools all know what to
expect.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.

Re: Enough with the ad-hoc naming schemes, please

[cliff white]

On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 13:08:51 -0500
Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com> wrote:

> Dear Linus,
> 
> I can't help but notice you've broken all the tools that rely on a
> stable naming scheme TWICE in the span of LESS THAN ONE POINT RELEASE.
> 
> In both cases, this could have been avoided by using Marcello's 2.4
> naming scheme. It's very simple: when you think something is "final",
> you call it a "release candidate" and tag it "-rcX". If it works out,
> you rename it _unmodified_ and everyone can trust that it hasn't
> broken again in the interval. If it's not "final" and you're accepting
> more than bugfixes, you call it a "pre-release" and tag it "-pre".
> Then developers and testers and automated tools all know what to
> expect.

Speaking for OSDL's automated testing team, we second this motion. 
judith
cliffw
OSDL


> 
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Re: Enough with the ad-hoc naming schemes, please

[Russell King]

On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 11:38:07AM -0700, cliff white wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 13:08:51 -0500
> Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com> wrote:
> 
> > Dear Linus,
> > 
> > I can't help but notice you've broken all the tools that rely on a
> > stable naming scheme TWICE in the span of LESS THAN ONE POINT RELEASE.
> > 
> > In both cases, this could have been avoided by using Marcello's 2.4
> > naming scheme. It's very simple: when you think something is "final",
> > you call it a "release candidate" and tag it "-rcX". If it works out,
> > you rename it _unmodified_ and everyone can trust that it hasn't
> > broken again in the interval. If it's not "final" and you're accepting
> > more than bugfixes, you call it a "pre-release" and tag it "-pre".
> > Then developers and testers and automated tools all know what to
> > expect.
> 
> Speaking for OSDL's automated testing team, we second this motion. 

<aol>me too</aol>  I've already made some representations to Linus
in private, and now I'm actively queueing up patches which have been
sitting around since the start of -rc1.  I, for one, no longer believe
in any naming scheme associated with mainline.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:  2.6 PCMCIA      - http://pcmcia.arm.linux.org.uk/
                 2.6 Serial core

Re: Enough with the ad-hoc naming schemes, please

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

On Mon, 18 Oct 2004, Russell King wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 11:38:07AM -0700, cliff white wrote:
> > On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 13:08:51 -0500
> > Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com> wrote:
> > > I can't help but notice you've broken all the tools that rely on a
> > > stable naming scheme TWICE in the span of LESS THAN ONE POINT RELEASE.
> > > 
> > > In both cases, this could have been avoided by using Marcello's 2.4
> > > naming scheme. It's very simple: when you think something is "final",
> > > you call it a "release candidate" and tag it "-rcX". If it works out,
> > > you rename it _unmodified_ and everyone can trust that it hasn't
> > > broken again in the interval. If it's not "final" and you're accepting
> > > more than bugfixes, you call it a "pre-release" and tag it "-pre".
> > > Then developers and testers and automated tools all know what to
> > > expect.
> > 
> > Speaking for OSDL's automated testing team, we second this motion. 
> 
> <aol>me too</aol>  I've already made some representations to Linus
> in private, and now I'm actively queueing up patches which have been
> sitting around since the start of -rc1.  I, for one, no longer believe
> in any naming scheme associated with mainline.

Ah, I'm not the only one! Apparently not all obvious fixes for things that got
obviously broken in 2.6.9-rc* were applied :-(

Not to mention e.g. the m68k signal handling got broken because of the removal
(without any warning in advance on linux-arch) of notify_parent(), which is BTW
still used by 5 archs, either in code or in comments (never trust comments?).

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

				    Geert (sometimes frustrated maintainer,
					   sometimes typing emails without
					   much calming down first ;-)

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
							    -- Linus Torvalds

Re: Enough with the ad-hoc naming schemes, please

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 01:08:51PM -0500, Matt Mackall wrote:
> Dear Linus,
> 
> I can't help but notice you've broken all the tools that rely on a
> stable naming scheme TWICE in the span of LESS THAN ONE POINT RELEASE.
> 
> In both cases, this could have been avoided by using Marcello's 2.4
> naming scheme. It's very simple: when you think something is "final",
> you call it a "release candidate" and tag it "-rcX". If it works out,
> you rename it _unmodified_ and everyone can trust that it hasn't
> broken again in the interval. If it's not "final" and you're accepting
> more than bugfixes, you call it a "pre-release" and tag it "-pre".
> Then developers and testers and automated tools all know what to
> expect.

indeed, the current -rc are really the good old -pre, and -final ir just
a completely stupid name for -rc.  Please try to get some sanity back into
the release naming.

Re: Enough with the ad-hoc naming schemes, please

[Martin J. Bligh]

> I can't help but notice you've broken all the tools that rely on a
> stable naming scheme TWICE in the span of LESS THAN ONE POINT RELEASE.
> 
> In both cases, this could have been avoided by using Marcello's 2.4
> naming scheme. It's very simple: when you think something is "final",
> you call it a "release candidate" and tag it "-rcX". If it works out,
> you rename it _unmodified_ and everyone can trust that it hasn't
> broken again in the interval. If it's not "final" and you're accepting
> more than bugfixes, you call it a "pre-release" and tag it "-pre".
> Then developers and testers and automated tools all know what to
> expect.

Yup - from my point of view, all this did was cause our automated testing 
tools to not test this release at all.

Perhaps we could document whatever the standard is going to be somewhere,
then stick to it.

M.