Re: [GIT PULL] Squashfs pull request for 2.6.29

Dave Jones
2009-01-22T21:52:17Z

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 08:30:18AM -0800, Greg KH wrote:

> I was wanting to stick with drivers to start with, but I really have no
> objection to adding filesystems, if they are self-contained, to the
> drivers/staging/ directory.
>
> I looked at adding squashfs, but at the time, it touched other portions
> of the kernel which wouldn't have made it a good canidate for staging.
> This was later resolved, and now that it is merged, it's a moot issue :)
>
> So, if anyone wants to send me filesystems, I'll be glad to take them
> into drivers/staging, as long as they are self-contained (novfs for
> example would fit this category.)

Filesystems in staging worries me.

* The number of people who competently review filesystem code
(and I mean real review here, not checkpatch & codingstyle crap)
is significantly less than those who review drivers.
I foresee stuff just lingering there for years.
(Look how long fs stuff hangs around unmerged in -mm for example).

* The fallout of staging is already starting to drift into distros.
Within a week of Fedora shipping a kernel that had staging/
we had requests to enable drivers from it.
And of course, those drivers were garbage.
This is only going to increase as time goes on.

* For crap drivers that a minority cares about, this isn't a big deal
to tell the users "build it yourself, we don't support it when stuff breaks".
(And a lot of that crap will break. NetworkManager won't work properly
with some of the wireless crap in staging for example), but by
continually adding to the shitpile the potential for review dramatically
gets reduced, and for something as critical as a filesystem, I find this
absolutely terrifying from a support perspective.

I don't mean to piss on your parade, but from my viewpoint, staging
is a trainwreck so far, and I'd hate to see it get worse.

We've already demonstrated "look how much stuff we can merge" time and
time again, but no-one ever seems to have a proposal for how we increase
the amount of review code gets before it's merged.

There's lowering the barrier for entry, and there's not having a barrier at all.
The latter is what I'm concerned that staging/ has become.

Dave

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