Re: Slow DOWN, please!!!

Linus Torvalds
2008-04-30T20:15:27Z

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> In fact, I'd personally like to make it even shorter

Just to clarify: I'd actually like to make the merge window be just a
week. If even that.

With linux-next hopefully stepping up to be a place where the actual
_conflicts_ (which are usually not the big problem, they are just
inconvenient from a timing standpoint) can get found and handled early, a
shorter merge window should be technically possible.

HOWEVER. Even now, at two weeks, we do have issues where timing just
doesn't fit some developer, because of conferences or vacations or just
random personal issues or whatever. There are always people who grumble
because the window didn't work for them.

Of course, they should have had it all ready, but somehow that simply
doesn't happen. I think it's against most human nature to be quite _that_
forward-looking.

And maybe everything would be ok if we could also shorten the actual
release cycle, so that if you miss one merge window for some random
conference or other (or just a *really* bad hair-day and you didn't get
your act together), you wouldn't mind too much and you'd just hit the next
one instead.

But that, in turn, is unrealistic because when bugs do happen, the latency
you get between testers and developers is long enough that I really don't
think we can shorten the after-merge-window thing much. Six weeks seems to
be already pushing it.

And as mentioned, a longer after-merge-window-stabilization phase is just
going to aggravate the problem next time around.

We could have staggered releases, but let's face it, that's what -mm and
linux-next and stable is all about.

Linus