From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754370Ab3KDU0d (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Nov 2013 15:26:33 -0500 Received: from smtp2.ispfabriek.nl ([37.251.0.169]:47152 "EHLO smtp2.ispfabriek.nl" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753425Ab3KDUVR (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Nov 2013 15:21:17 -0500 X-Greylist: delayed 490 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Mon, 04 Nov 2013 15:21:16 EST Message-ID: <5277FFC5.4040204@xmsnet.nl> Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 21:12:53 +0100 From: Hans de Bruin User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130807 Thunderbird/17.0.8 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Linus Torvalds CC: Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: Linux 3.12 released .. and no merge window yet .. and 4.0 plans? References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 11/04/2013 01:10 AM, Linus Torvalds wrote: > ... > > Anyway.. > > Onto a totally different topic: we're getting to release numbers where > I have to take off my socks to count that high again. I'm ok with > 3., but I don't want us to get to the kinds of crazy > numbers we had in the 2.x series, so at some point we're going to cut > over from 3.x to 4.x, just to keep the numbers small and easy to > remember. We're not there yet, but I would actually prefer to not go > into the twenties, so I can see it happening in a year or so, and > we'll have 4.0 follow 3.19 or something like that. > > Now, it's just a number (since we've long since given up on > feature-related releases), and it's at least a year away, so why do I > even mention it at all? > > The reason I mention it is because I've been mulling over something > Dirk Hohndel said during LinuxCon EU and the kernel summit. He asked > at the Q&A session whether we could do a release with just stability > and bug-fixes, and I pooh-poohed it because I didn't see most of us > having the attention span required for that > (cough*cough*moronic*woodland creature*cough*cough). I would not trust 4.0 as a bug free and stable kernel. Now 4.0.99 I would trust. Almost that is. because some developer would have asked the 4.0.y maintainer to commit his one day old 4.x bugfix to the 4.0.y tree before lots of people would have tested it. The 4.0 would only force a stable kernel maintainer to choose that kernel as his next stable tree. If he does not 4.0 has no meaning at all. The 4.0 also does not solve another problem. Since the regression team stopped tracking bugs nobody really knows how many bugs have been forgotten or ignored. There needs to be some sort of feedback-loop to force people to fix problems before they invent new ones. I do not think a bug-fix round once every 20 releases will accomplice that -- Hans