Re: RFD: Kernel release numbering

Dave Jones
2005-03-02T23:30:03Z

On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 11:06:34PM +0000, Russell King wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 02:21:38PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > In other words, we'd have an increasing level of instability with an odd
> > release number, depending on how long-term the instability is.
> >
> > - 2.6.<even>: even at all levels, aim for having had minimally intrusive
> > patches leading up to it (timeframe: a week or two)
> >
> > with the odd numbers going like:
> >
> > - 2.6.<odd>: still a stable kernel, but accept bigger changes leading up
> > to it (timeframe: a month or two).
> > - 2.<odd>.x: aim for big changes that may destabilize the kernel for
> > several releases (timeframe: a year or two)
> > - <odd>.x.x: Linus went crazy, broke absolutely _everything_, and rewrote
> > the kernel to be a microkernel using a special message-passing version
> > of Visual Basic. (timeframe: "we expect that he will be released from
> > the mental institution in a decade or two").
>
> This sounds good, until you realise that some of us have been sitting
> on about 30 patches for at least the last month, because we where
> following your guidelines about the -rc's. Things like adding support
> for new ARM machines and other devices, dynamic tick support for ARM,
> etc.
>
> If I'm going to have to sit on this stuff for another month, it'll bit
> rot rather badly, and I might as well throw away all these patches now
> and ask people not to send stuff other than pure bug fixes.

The fact that this new approach serialises the stable/devel lineation
whereas traditionally it was parallel (2.x.y/2.x+1.y) is going to be
a real pain for a lot of maintainers.

In short, instead of a single 'merge with linus tree', I'm now going to
need a 'merge with linus' and 'merge with linus next time' tree for every
tree I maintain.. It's not impossible to maintain, but its extra burden.
Burden which a lot of folks may consider not worth it.

Dave