On Fri, 10 Nov 2006 08:42:58 -0800 Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> Jesper Juhl wrote:
> > On 10/11/06, Al Boldi <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> > [...]
> >> > There are bugfixes which are too big for stable or -rc releases,
> >> that are
> >> > queued for 2.6.20. "Bugfix only" is a relative statement. Do you
> >> include,
> >> > new hardware support, new security api's, performance fixes. It
> >> gets to
> >> > be real hard to decide, because these are the changes that often cause
> >> > regressions; often one major bug fix causes two minor bugs.
> >>
> >> That's exactly the point I'm trying to get across; the 2.6 dev model
> >> tries to
> >> be two cycles in one, dev and stable, which yields an awkward catch22
> >> situation.
> >>
> >> The only sane way forward in such a situation is to realize the
> >> mistake and
> >> return to the focused dev-only / stable-only model.
> >>
> >> This would probably involve pushing the current 2.6 kernel into 2.8 and
> >> starting 2.9 as a dev-cycle only, once 2.8 has structurally stabilized.
> >>
> >
> > That was not what I was arguing for in the initial mail at all.
> > I think the 2.6 model works very well in general. All I was pushing
> > for was a single cycle focused mainly on bug fixes once in a while.
> >
> I like the current model fine. From a developer point of view:
I don't think that it's great, but having even/odd stable/development
is even worse.
But I agree with Jesper and Andrew's comments in general, that
we do have stability problems and we have a lack of people
who are working on bugs.
> * More branches means having to fix and retest a bug more places.
> Workload goes up geometrically with number of versions.
> So most developers end up ignoring fixing more than 2 versions;
> anything more than -current and -stable are ignored.
> * Holding off the tide of changes doesn't work. It just leads to
> massive integration headaches.
> * Many bugs don't show up until kernel is run on wide range of hardware,
> but kernel doesn't get exposed to wide range of hardware and
> applications until after it is declared stable. It is a Catch-22.
> The current stability range of
> -subtree ... -mm ... 2.6.X ... 2.6.X.Y... 2.6.vendor
> works well for most people. The people it doesn't work for are trying
> to get something for nothing. They want stability and the latest kernel
> at the same time.
>
> There are some things that do need working on:
> * Old bugs die, the bugzilla database needs a 6mo prune out.
>
> * Bugzilla.kernel.org is underutilized and is only a small sample of the
> real problems. Not sure if it is a training, user, behaviour issue or
> just that bugzilla is crap.
Behavior, ease of use vs. email.
> * Vendor bugs (that could be fixed) aren't forwarded to lkml or bugzilla
ack
> * LKML is an overloaded communication channel, do we need:
> [email protected] ?
Either that or lkml is/remains for bug reporting and we move development
somewhere else. Or my [repeated] preference:
do development on specific mailing lists (although there would
likely need to be a fallback list when it's not clear which mailing
list should be used)
> * Developers can't get (or afford to buy) the new hardware that causes
> a lot of the pain. Just look at the number of bug reports due to new
> flavors of motherboards, chipsets, etc. I spent 3mo on a bug that took
> one day to fix once I got the hardware.
Yep.
---
~Randy
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