This is [Re:] How to improve the quality of the kernel[?].

Oleg Verych
2007-06-19T03:54:27Z

[Dear Debbug developers, i wish your ideas will be useful.]

* From: Linus Torvalds
* Newsgroups: gmane.linux.kernel
* Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 17:09:37 -0700 (PDT)
>
> On Mon, 18 Jun 2007, Martin Bligh wrote:
>>
>> Sorry to be a wet blanket, but I've seen those sort of things
>> before, and they just don't seem to work, especially in the
>> environment we're in with such a massive diversity of hardware.
>
> I do agree. It _sounds_ like a great idea to try to control the flow of
> patches better,

There were some ideas, i will try to summarize:

* New Patches (or sets) need tracking, review, testing

Zero (tracking) done by sending (To, or bcc) [RFC] patch to something
like submit@pts.e-mail.example.com (like BTS now). Notifications will
be sent to intrested maintainers (if meta-information is ok) or testers
(see below)

First is mostly done by maintainers or interested individuals.
Result is "Acked-by" and "Cc" entries in the next patch sent. Due to
lack of tracking this things are done manually, are generally in
trusted manner. But bad like <200706172053.41806.bzolnier@gmail.com>
sometimes happens.

When patch in sent to this PTS, your lovely
checkpatch/check-whatever-crap-has-being-sent tools can be set up as
gatekeepers, thus making impossible stupid errors with MIME coding,
line wrapping, whatever style you've came up with now in checking
sent crap.

* Tracking results of review (Acked-by).

This can be mostly e-mail exchange with comments and agreements.
"Acked-by" semantic may be implemented in form of contlol message to
tracking system, and this system will generate e-mail confirmation
to the patch author in form of
"Acked-by: Developer's Name <message-id of e-mail with acke-by>"

Thus, next patch will have this entry. And if testing of this
version ir regression happens, there's info about who is/was
interested/involved.

* Testing.

Mainly same for "Tested-by"
(newly suggested by Stefan <4675C083.6080409@s5r6.in-berlin.de>)

|-*- Feature Needed -*-
Addition, needed is hardware user tested have/had/used. Currently
``reportbug'' tool includes packed specific and system specific
additions automaticly gathered and inserted to e-mail sent to BTS.
(e.g. <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.kernel/29740>)

Formats of that hardware profile(as system information in reportbug)
. arch
. chipset
. hdd
. vga
...
in meaningful fields, and not just lspci -v[vv]. If additional info
(-vvv) or something required, profile can be exteded.

For kernel's sub-system information(as packed info):
. subsystem/driver/kernel version (or similar)
. maintainers must know what they need to see more here

|-*- back to patches -*-

Last and not least tast cases, that everyone might came up with.

All formats this can be agreed (or implemented and updated latter)
and inserted automaticly.

* Commit.
Id is recorded, patch archived. But any additions are welcome,
regressions will pop up this patch again (reopen in BTS).

> but in the end, it needs to also be easy and painfree to the people
> involved, and also make sure that any added workflow doesn't require
> even *more* load and expertise on the already often overworked
> maintainers..

Experienced BTS users and developers. Please, correct me if i'm wrong.
At least e-mail part of Debian's BTS and whole idea of it is *exactly*
what is needed. Bugzilla fans, you can still use you useless pet,
because Debian developers have done things, to track and e-mail states
of bugs: <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.kernel/29736>

> In many cases, I think it tends to *sound* great to try to avoid
> regressions in the first place - but it also sounds like one of those "I
> wish the world didn't work the way it did" kind of things. A worthy goal,
> but not necessarily one that is compatible with reality.

I wish perl hackers out there will join this yet-new effort. I know
there many of them out there, writing kilobytes of checkfile and
checkpatch (i've wrote in few lines of ``sed'').

BTS is written on perl, but any interoperability interface, like
stdin/stdout for python or shell hackers is worth of thinking about.

Please, see more and make useful follows ups: http://bugs.debian.org/

Please, do not (<46772321.9080602@mbligh.org>)
""" I know you hate bugzilla ... but at least I can try to make that bit
of the process work better.
""" [here's you fancy checkbox...]

Thanks.
____