Re: Slow DOWN, please!!!

Linus Torvalds
2008-05-01T02:01:44Z

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008, David Miller wrote:
> From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
> Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:40:39 -0700 (PDT)
>
> > IOW, I argue that the high speed of merging very much is a big part of
> > what gives us quality in the end. It may result in bugs along the way, but
> > it also results in fixes, and lots of people looking at the result (and
> > looking at it in *context*, not just as a patch flying around).
>
> This is a huge burdon to put on people.
>
> The more broken stuff you merge, the more people are forced to track
> these problems down so that they can get their own work done.

I'm not saying we should merge crap.

You can take any argument too far, and clearly it doesn't mean that we
should just accept *anything*, because it will magically be gilded by its
mere inclusion into the kernel. No, I'm not going to argue that.

But I do want to argue against the notion that the only way to raise
quality is to do it before it gets merged. It's often better to merge
early, and fix the issues the merge brings up early too!

Release early, release often. That was the watch-word early in Linux
kernel development, and there was a reason for it. And it _worked_. Did it
mean "release crap, release anything"? No. But it did mean that things got
lots more exposure - even if those "things" were sometimes bugs.

Linus