Re: A modest proposal -- We need a patch penguin

John Alvord
2002-01-29T19:11:52Z

On Tue, 29 Jan 2002 13:06:09 +0000 (GMT), Alan Cox
<alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:

>> throughput is as high as he wants it to be! Linus has pointed out
>> more than once that a big part of his job is to limit change. Maybe
>> he's happy with the current rate of change in 2.5. (That doesn't
>> mean everything is optimal--he might wish for higher quality changes
>> or a different mix of changes, just not more.)
>
>Progress happens at its own rate. Linus can no more control rate of change
>than you can put a waterfall into low gear. There is a difference between
>refusing stuff where the quality is low and losing stuff which is clear
>fixes
>
>> Two, Linus has argued that maintainers are his patch penguins;
>> whereas you favor a single integration point between the maintainers
>> and Linus. This has advantages and disadvantages, but on the whole,
>> I think it is better if Linus works directly with subsystem
>
>Perl I think very much shows otherwise. Right now we have a maze of partially
>integrated trees which overlap, clash when the people send stuff to Linus and
>worse.
>
>When you have one or two integrators you have a single tree pretty much everyone
>builds new stuff from and which people maintain small diffs relative to. At
>the end of the day that ends up like the older -ac tree, and with the same
>conditions - notably that anything in it might be going to see /dev/null not
>Linus if its shown to be flawed or not done well.
>
Multiple integrator-trees dilute the tester pool, which is a major
limitation on progress.

john alvord