Re: Linux 2.6.21

Gene Heskett
2007-04-26T21:02:25Z

On Thursday 26 April 2007, Stephen Clark wrote:
>Jeff Garzik wrote:
>>IMO, the closer you look, the more warts you find. Before you starting
>>doing your work with kernel regressions, no one was really tracking it.
>> I bet you have helped cut down on the regressions, but I have no good
>>way to quantify my gut feeling.
>>
>>Additional comments on developers and fixing regressions:
>>
>>* Sometimes seeing a long list, peoples' eyes glaze over. Its just
>>human nature. A long list also gives us no idea of scale, or severity.
>> I bet a weekly "top 10 bugs and regressions" email would help focus
>>developer attention.
>>
>>* To be effective, lists, either long or top-10, must be pruned if you
>>get a sense that only one user is affected. [With oopses and BUGs as a
>>clear exception,] many problems benefit from at least two users
>>reporting a bug.
>>
>>* It gets a bit tiresome to field the large number of driver bug reports
>>that eventually turn out to be related to broken interrupt handling
>>somehow. I think we developers need to get better at showing users how
>>to isolate driver vs. PCI/ACPI/core bugs. Maybe drivers need to start
>>introducing interrupt delivery tests into their probe code. Overall,
>>broken interrupt handling manifests in several ways, most of which
>>initially appear symptomatic of a broken driver.
>>
>> Jeff
>>
>>
>>-
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>
>Jeff,
>
>If hardware worked in the previous version of the kernel can't users expect
> the same hardware to work in this kernel?
>
>Steve

I think that is indeed a reasonable expectation.

--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
It is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is a proper judge of it.
-- Oscar Wilde