Re: New (now current development process)

Andrew Morton
2005-10-31T01:11:55Z

Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> wrote:
>
> On Sunday 30 October 2005 20:12, Andrew Morton wrote:
>
> > The freezes are for fixing bugs, especially recent regressions. There's no
> > shortage of them, you know.
> >
> > I you can think of a better way to get kernel developers off their butts
> > and actually fixing bugs, I'm all ears.
>
> The problem is that you usually cannot do proper bug fixing because
> the release might be just around the corner, so you typically
> chose the ugly workaround or revert, or just reject changes for bugs that a
> are too risky or the impact too low because there is not enough time to
> properly test anymore.

There is absolutely nothing preventing people from working on bugs at any
time! It's not as if a bugfix can ever come too early.

> It might work better if we were told when the releases would actually
> happen and you don't need to fear that this not quite tested everywhere
> bugfix you're about to submit might make it into the gold kernel, breaking
> the world for some subset of users.

Nobody knows when a kernel will be released, because it's released
according to perceived bug status, not according to a preconceived
timeline.

I just don't buy what you're saying. Unless the kernel is at -rc3 or -rc4,
we *know* the release is weeks away - it's always been thus.