Re: RFD: Kernel release numbering

Daniel Barkalow
2005-03-03T17:55:38Z

On Thu, 3 Mar 2005, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> - some very _technical_ and objective rules on patches. And they should
> limit the patches severely, so that people can never blame the sucker
> who does the job. For example, I would suggest that "size" be one hard
> technical rule. If the patch is more than 100 lines (with context) in
> size, it's not trivial any more. Really. Two big screenfuls (or four,
> for people who still use the ISO-ANSI standard 80x24 vt100)

One thing that's worth pointing out is that sometimes the 20-line patch is
sufficient to solve the problem, but is lousy code. That's fine for a tree
that will be frozen in a couple of months after only getting little fixes
to other files, but mainline should get a real fix, which wouldn't be
acceptable in the sucker tree. So 2.6.(x+1) shouldn't automatically get
2.6.x.y. Should reverting a 200-line patch which turned out to need
another 200 lines to work be acceptable?

> Also, I'd suggest that a _hard_ rule (ie nobody can override it) would
> also be that the problem causes an oops, a hang, or a real security
> problem that somebody can come up with an exploit for (ie no "there
> could be a two-instruction race" crap. Only "there is a race, and
> here's how you exploit it"). The exploit wouldn't need to be full code
> that gets root, but an explanation of it, at least.

Similar rule for driver patches: you can patch a driver if it makes the
device not work (but you couldn't patch the core)?

> Does this mean that some patches would never go into this tree? Yes. It
> would mean that patches that some people might feel very _strongly_ are
> good patches would never ever show up in this tree, but on the other hand,
> I can see this tree being useful regardless, and I think the lack of
> flexibility in this case is actually the whole _point_ of the tree. The
> lack of flexibility is the very thing that makes this be the kind of base
> that anybody else can then hang their own patches on top of. There should
> never be a situation where "I'd like that tree, but I think xxxx was done
> wrong".

The good patches will show up in 2.6.(x+1).1, which should be
sufficient. It's not the same sucker tree, but it's a sucker tree.

-Daniel
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