Re: Linux 2.6.21

Linus Torvalds
2007-04-26T16:40:34Z

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Jan Engelhardt wrote:
>
> I really appreciate the lot of -rcs, especially if there are so many
> intrusive changes/regressions. Like Andrew, I have a feeling that it
> gets buggier, but at least, it seems to be made up every ... two
> releases.

I wouldn't say that, but yes, there is at least *some* tendency to not
merge scary stuff after a painful release.

For example, I can certainly say that after 2.6.21, I'm likely to be very
unhappy merging something that isn't "obviously safe". I knew the timer
changes were potentially painful, I just hadn't realized just *how*
painful they would be (we had some SATA/IDE changes too, of course, it's
not all just about the timers, those just ended up being more noticeable
to me than some of the other things were).

> About 2.6.21 - will see, rc has been to my liking.

I actually hope that 2.6.21 isn't even all that bad, despite all the
worries about it. And I may be complaining about the problems the timers
caused, but it was definitely something that was not only worth it, it was
overdue - and those NO_HZ issues had been brewing literally for years. So
considering issues like that, I think we're actually doing fairly well.

One of the bigger issues is that I think -mm (and I'm pretty sure Andrew
will agree with me on this) has really had a rather spotty history. It's
been unstable enough at times that I suspect people have largely stopped
testing it, with just the most die-hard testers running -mm.

So -mm is still very useful just because *Andrew* tests it, and finds all
kinds of issues with it, but I literally suspect that Andrew himself is
personally a big part of that, which is kind of wasteful - we should be
able to spread out the pain more. Andrew is also too damn polite when
something goes wrong ;)

So we should have somebody like Christoph running -mm, and when things
break, we'll just sic Christoph on whoever broke it, and teach people
proper fear and respect! As it is, I think people tend to send things to
-mm a bit *too* eagerly, because there is no downside - Andrew is a "cheap
date" testing-wise, and always puts out ;)

Linus