Re: RFD: Kernel release numbering

Greg KH
2005-03-03T17:18:10Z

On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 06:08:08PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 08:23:39AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> >...
> > But look at how to solve it. The _logical_ solution is to have a third
> > line of defense: we have the -mm trees (wild and wacky patches), and we
> > have my tree (hopefully not wacky any more), and it would be good to have
> > a third level tree (which I'm just not interested in, because that one
> > doesn't do any development any more) which only takes the "so totally not
> > wild that it's really boring" patches.
> >
> > In fact, if somebody maintained that kind of tree, especially in BK, it
> > would be trivial for me to just pull from it every once in a while (like
> > ever _day_ if necessary). But for that to work, then that tree would have
> > to be about so _obviously_ not wild patches that it's a no-brainer.
> >
> > So what's the problem with this approach? It would seem to make everybody
> > happy: it would reduce my load, it would give people the alternate "2.6.x
> > base kernel plus fixes only" parallell track, and it would _not_ have the
> > testability issue (because I think a lot of people would be happy to test
> > that tree, and if it was always based on the last 2.6.x release, there
> > would be no issues.
> >...
> > - some very _technical_ and objective rules on patches. And they should
> > limit the patches severely, so that people can never blame the sucker
> > who does the job. For example, I would suggest that "size" be one hard
> > technical rule. If the patch is more than 100 lines (with context) in
> > size, it's not trivial any more. Really. Two big screenfuls (or four,
> > for people who still use the ISO-ANSI standard 80x24 vt100)
> >...
>
> This only attacks part of the problem.
>
> Most regressions that annoy users aren't in some core system, they are
> in drivers.
>
> What if $big_driver_update in 2.6.12 fixed a serious bug for some people
> but broke the driver for many other people, and both reverting this
> patch and fixing the driver for the people it's broken for exceeds such
> size limits?

Then either the patch author splits out the bug if they want to, or we
punt and say "wait for 2.6.12". Distros can then decide if they want to
take the whole $big_patch in their releases, if they are near a release
cycle.

I feel that imposing such limits is the only way this can be done and
remain sane.

thanks,

greg k-h