Re: Announce: Linux-next (Or Andrew's dream :-))

Andrew Morton
2008-02-15T23:38:20Z

On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 23:23:08 +0000
Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 12, 2008 at 12:48:13PM -0800, Greg KH wrote:
> > I have tried, and successfully done this many times in the past. The
> > kobject change was one example: add a new function, migrate all users of
> > a direct pointer over to that function, after that work is all done and
> > in, change the structure and do the needed work afterward. All is
> > bisectable completly, with no big "flag day" needed.
>
> Incorrect - because this all happened far too quickly. This is one of
> the reasons that I ended up having to redo various parts of the ARM tree
> because stuff broke - set_kset_name() completely vanished introducing
> compile errors, and iirc some merge issues as well.
>
> I had patches introducing new system objects which use that, and
> modifications extremely close to other uses in the PXA code.
>
> The end result (through rebuilding the affected parts of my git tree, and
> asking people for replacement patches) was something that is bisectable -
> but had I tried to merge stuff as is, it would've been an utter mess, and
> _was_ unbuildable.
>

I wonder why I didn't see any of this - I build arm allmodconfig at least
once a week, usually more frequently.

So either the offending patches weren't in my pile or arm allmodconfig is
worse than I thought :(

It really is in arch maintainers' best interest to keep their allmodconfig
in good shape, for this reason. arm's _isn't_ in good shape: the compile
fails for several long-standing reasons (eg: no hope of building DRM) and I
don't think the coverage is very broad either.