Re: RT patch acceptance

Nick Piggin
2005-05-24T15:26:29Z

K.R. Foley wrote:

>
> There are definitely those who would prefer to have the functionality,
> at least as an option, in the mainline kernel. The group that I contract
> for get heartburn about having to patch every kernel running on every
> development workstation and every production system. We need hard RT,
> but currently when we have to have hard RT we go with a different
> product.

Well, yes. There are lots of things Linux isn't suited for.
There are likewise a lot of patches that SGI would love to
get into the kernel so it runs better on their 500+ CPU
systems. My point was just that a new functionality/feature
doesn't by itself justify being included in the kernel.org
kernel.

> Another thing that some of us want/need is a hard real-time
> Linux that doesn't create the segregation that most of these specialized
> products create. Currently there are damn few choices for real posix
> applications development with hard RT requirements running in a Unix
> environment.
>

Maybe there are damn few because it is hard to get right within
the framework of a general posix environment. Or maybe its
because it has a comparatively small userbase (compared to say
mid/small servers and desktops). Which are neither completely
invalid reasons against its inclusion in Linux.

But I want to be clear that I haven't read or thought about the
code in question too much, and I don't have any opinions on it
yet. So please nobody involve me in a flamewar about it :)

Nick