Re: 2.6.19 -mm merge plans

Nick Piggin
2006-09-25T11:55:01Z

Ingo Molnar wrote:

>* Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> wrote:
>
>
>>I think the "big merges in the first two weeks, and a -rc1 after, and
>>no new code after that" rule has been working because it brought
>>everybody in on the same page.
>>
>
>yeah. I dont really support the even/odd release thing because even the
>old 1.2/1.3/2.0/2.1/2.2/2.3/2.4 scheme _always_ confused non-insiders.
>Sometimes i saw it confuse people who already understood the GPL ;-)
>Furthermore it would just dillute our version numbers to encode some
>information that "-rc1" indicates just as well. Insiders know perfectly
>well that when -rc1 is released the merge window is closed. And what
>causes -rc elongation is usually not the lack of communication towards
>users or lack of testing but the lack of fixing power ...
>

OTOH, if we were worried about confusing people, we wouldn't be
using the acronym 'rc' for our 'Ridiculous Count', and have our rc1
denote the result of 2 weeks of stuffing the tree with new features
and intrusive changes, where people might mistake that for the much
more common RC-as-in-'Release Candidate'. :)

Our -rc is what everyone else knows as -pre, and our dot zeros
basically correspond to what people think of as a release candidate.
As a developer it doesn't hurt me and I do like the current system,
but in principle I just dislike things that are more confusing than
they could be.

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