Re: Slow DOWN, please!!!

Ingo Molnar
2008-04-30T22:20:50Z

* David Miller <davem@davemloft.net> wrote:

> > linux-next does little to address our two largest (IMO) problems:
> > inadequate review and inadequate response to bug and regression
> > reports. But those problems are harder to fix..
>
> This is all about positive and negative reinforcement.
>
> The people who sit and git bisect their lives away to get the
> regressions fixed need more positive reinforcement. And the people
> who stick these regressions into the tree need more negative
> reinforcement.

What we need is not 'negative reinforcement'. That is just nasty, open
warfare between isolated parties, expressed in a politically correct
way.

The core problem is that every maintainer has his own subjective,
assymetric view and experience about this matter: to him his own tree is
almost problem-free and most problems are very easy to fix, while other
problems in other trees are nuisance that should never have been put
upstream.

Also, people get defensive when their regressions gets pointed out in
anything but the most respectful and casual manner.

For example, how on earth do i tell you that during the v2.6.24 merge
window, half of all x86 test-machines for me and others were broken
because they had no networking, for more than a week in a row? Are you
surprised about this (true) experience we had? Do you feel insulted? Do
you feel unfairly handled and slandered?

The same goes in the other direction as well - you were just hit by
scheduler tree related regressions that were only triggered on your
128-way sparc64, but not on our 64way x86 and smaller boxes.

The thing is, what we really need is more cooperation and earlier
integration - more people actually testing linux-next occasionally to
see how things will look like in the next merge window.

linux-next doing build tests is fine, but the nasty regressions that
will hit your box can only be solved if _you_ boot linux-next at least
once before the merge window opens. The regressions that will hit my box
can only be avoided if i test your tree.

hm? And can we please somehow talk about this without flaming each other
in the process?

Ingo