Re: Announce: Linux-next (Or Andrew's dream :-))

Randy Dunlap
2008-02-15T23:49:40Z

On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:37:32 -0800 Andrew Morton wrote:

> On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 23:23:08 +0000
> Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Feb 12, 2008 at 12:48:13PM -0800, Greg KH wrote:
> > > I have tried, and successfully done this many times in the past. The
> > > kobject change was one example: add a new function, migrate all users of
> > > a direct pointer over to that function, after that work is all done and
> > > in, change the structure and do the needed work afterward. All is
> > > bisectable completly, with no big "flag day" needed.
> >
> > Incorrect - because this all happened far too quickly. This is one of
> > the reasons that I ended up having to redo various parts of the ARM tree
> > because stuff broke - set_kset_name() completely vanished introducing
> > compile errors, and iirc some merge issues as well.
> >
> > I had patches introducing new system objects which use that, and
> > modifications extremely close to other uses in the PXA code.
> >
> > The end result (through rebuilding the affected parts of my git tree, and
> > asking people for replacement patches) was something that is bisectable -
> > but had I tried to merge stuff as is, it would've been an utter mess, and
> > _was_ unbuildable.
> >
>
> I wonder why I didn't see any of this - I build arm allmodconfig at least
> once a week, usually more frequently.
>
> So either the offending patches weren't in my pile or arm allmodconfig is
> worse than I thought :(
>
> It really is in arch maintainers' best interest to keep their allmodconfig
> in good shape, for this reason. arm's _isn't_ in good shape: the compile
> fails for several long-standing reasons (eg: no hope of building DRM) and I
> don't think the coverage is very broad either.

I think that Russell has said that allmodconfig isn't very realistic
for ARM, with its 70+ config files. Nevertheless, having a usable
allmodconfig would be very helpful.

---
~Randy