Re: New (now current development process)

Rob Landley
2005-10-31T05:06:24Z

On Sunday 30 October 2005 18:48, Andi Kleen wrote:
> 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.
>
> 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.

Hence the -mm tree, which takes stuff that may still need to be debugged.
Except that it has this nasty habit of taking stuff which still needs to be
debugged from people _other_than_you_, which screws you up. You seem to want
a tree where the only stuff likely to break is your stuff, which is another
popular option: maintaining your own developer tree. Getting people to _use_
such a tree takes a bit of work, but that's not news to anybody.

Think about what you're asking for here. Imagine that other people _also_ get
what you're asking for, at the same time. Is it still what you want?

Right now patches go from developer tree, to -mm tree, to -linus tree, with a
larger audience each time. The _reason_ linus's tree has a larger audience
is exactly _because_ the patches in it have had more testing so it's less
likely to break. And the releases have a way larger audience than Linus's
-rc releases, and the distro kernels have a larger audience than that...

> -Andi

Rob