Re: RFD: Kernel release numbering

[Ed Tomlinson <tomlins@cam.org>]

On Wednesday 02 March 2005 22:37, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 2 Mar 2005, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> > 
> > If we want a calming period, we need to do development like 2.4.x is 
> > done today.  It's sane, understandable and it works.
> 
> No. It's insane, and the only reason it works is that 2.4.x is a totally
> different animal. Namely it doesn't have the kind of active development AT
> ALL any more. It _only_ has the "even" number kind of things, and quite 
> frankly, even those are a lot less than 2.6.x has.
> 
> > 2.6.x-pre: bugfixes and features
> > 2.6.x-rc: bugfixes only
> 
> And the reason it does _not_ work is that all the people we want testing 
> sure as _hell_ won't be testing -rc versions.
> 
> That's the whole point here, at least to me. I want to have people test 
> things out, but it doesn't matter how many -rc kernels I'd do, it just 
> won't happen. It's not a "real release".
> 
> In contrast, making it a real release, and making it clear that it's a 
> release in its own right, might actually get people to use it. 

It seems to me that the problem is not the numbering scheme.  We _will_
experience the same issues no mater what scheme we use...  The way I see
it is that we need a way to tell how much testing a given release has had.
I would suggest an opt outable scheme that records boot (via an email 
for instance) and asks for comments after a day or two.  With this sort of 
method we would _know_ just how much testing is done.  We eventually 
could start to relate the amount of testing to just how stable the kernel 
will be.

Comments
Ed Tomlinson