Re: Linux 3.12 released .. and no merge window yet .. and 4.0 plans?

Geert Uytterhoeven
2013-11-04T19:53:16Z

On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 8:08 PM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>>> So I may be pessimistic, but I'd expect many developers would go "Let's
>>> hunt bugs.. Wait. Oooh, shiny" and go off doing some new feature after
>>> all instead. Or just take that release off.
>>>
>>> But I do wonder.. Maybe it would be possible, and I'm just unfairly
>>> projecting my own inner squirrel onto other kernel developers. If we
>>> have enough heads-up that people *know* that for one release (and
>>> companies/managers know that too) the only patches that get accepted are
>>> the kind that fix bugs, maybe people really would have sufficient
>>> attention span that it could work.
>>>
>>> And the reason I mention "4.0" is that it would be a lovely time to do
>>> that. Roughly a years heads-up that "ok, after 3.19 (or whatever), we're
>>> doing a release with *just* fixes, and then that becomes 4.0".
>>>
>>> Comments?
>>
>> I think the biggest problem wouldn't even be the enforcement of
>> bugfixes-only during that 2.5 months period, or kernel developers
>> surviving such a long streak of boredom, but v3.19 would also probably be
>> a super-stressful release to maintainers, as everyone would try to cram
>> their feature in there. And if anything important misses that window then
>> it's a +5 months wait...
>
> I'd agree with that, but it wouldn't be limited to just the final
> non-bugfix release. It would be a year-long "shove as much as we can
> in" push, and I'd be fearful of doing any distro kernel based on any
> one of those releases. Clearly the subsystem maintainers would still
> be fighting the good fight, but I'm concerned they'd be overwhelmed
> and/or burnt out by the time 4.0 came around.

I'm afraid to avoid that, you have to do the bug-fixing release *now*,
without early warning...

Yes, it screws all short-term planning, but it relieves the stress from all
maintainters, and puts the stress/blame on a single person, of which we
all know he can handle it and say "no".

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
-- Linus Torvalds