Re: New dev model (was [PATCH] delete devfs)

Adrian Bunk
2004-07-22T19:33:46Z

Hi Andrew,

my personal opinon is that this new development model isn't a good
idea from the point of view of users:

There's much worth in having a very stable kernel. Many people use for
different reasons self-compiled ftp.kernel.org kernels. In 2.4, it took
until at about 2.4.18 or 2.4.22 [1] until it was reasonable stable.
Today, most code in the 2.4 kernel has had several years of testing and
it's therefore quite stable even in unusual configurations. Besides
this, an upgrade like from 2.4.25 to 2.4.26 is pretty low-risk since
there shouldn't be any changes that might break existing setups.

If your work together with Linus is so effective, why can't you both do
all the changes in a new 2.7 tree that includes also all incompatible
and potential dangerous changes as well as the removal of obsolete code
like devfs or OSS. I don't see the negative effect if a 2.7 branch was
created today and together with a feature freeze for 2.7 three months
from now this might result in a 2.8.0 before christmas [2] that contains
all the new features/removals/changes while 2.6 will evolve further into
a rock-solid stable kernel.

cu
Adrian

[1] there are different opinions on the exact version number, but it was
definitely not 2.4.10
[2] perhaps a bit optimistic, but it shouldn't be years from now

--

"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed