Re: 2.6.19 -mm merge plans

Linus Torvalds
2006-09-21T15:26:28Z

On Thu, 21 Sep 2006, Alan Cox wrote:
>
> A suggestion from the department of evil ideas: Call even cycles
> development odd ones stabilizing. Nothing gets into an odd one without a
> review and linux-kernel signoff/ack ?

I don't think that's an evil idea, and in fact we've discussed it before.
I personally like it - right now we tend to have that "interminable series
of -rc<n>" (where <n> is 3..) before release, and I'd almost personally
prefer to just have a rule that is more along the lines of

- 2.6.<odd> is "the big initial merges with all the obvious fixes to make
it all work" (ie roughly the current -rc2 or perhaps -rc3).

- 2.6.<even> is "no big merges, just careful fixes" (ie the current "real
release")

Each would be ~3 weeks, leaving us with effectively the same real release
schedule, just a naming change.

That said, I think Andrew was of the opinion that it doesn't really _fix_
anything, and he may well be right. What's the point of the odd release,
if the weekly snapshots after that are supposed to be strictly better than
it anyway?

So I think I may like it just because it _seems_ to combine the good
features of both the old naming scheme and the current one, but I suspect
Andrew may be right in that it doesn't _really_ change anything, deep
down.

Dunno.

Linus