Re: Linux 2.6.21

Jeff Garzik
2007-04-26T18:05:38Z

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