Re: [2.6 patch] remove CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL

Adrian Bunk
2008-01-01T15:18:27Z

On Tue, Jan 01, 2008 at 02:23:44PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Tue, 1 Jan 2008 15:48:09 +0200
> Adrian Bunk <bunk@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> > This patch removes the EXPERIMENTAL option and all dependencies on
> > EXPERIMENTAL since they are pointless.
>
> NAK
>
> Experimental is an important guide to driver and code quality.
>...

History has shown that EXPERIMENTAL tags in many areas of the kernel
have not been maintained in a way that they would be usable as a guide.

And as soon as you need _one_ driver or feature depending on
EXPERIMENTAL, you anyway lose all benefits it might have had.

The latter is the point where it makes sense if a user or distribution
e.g. enables CONFIG_ATA_EXPERIMENTAL for getting all hardware supported
but not CONFIG_CRYPTO_EXPERIMENTAL because he doesn't want to use
(resp. support usage of) experimental cryptographic algorithm
implementations.

> > This patch has been sent on:
> > 11 Dec 2007
> > 25 Nov 2007
> > 17 Nov 2007
>
> So why not drop it instead. It clearly has no consensus

That's not about consensus, it's more that the number of submissions
required until Andrew includes a patch into -mm seems to be related to
the number of files touched...

cu
Adrian

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