Andrew Morton wrote:
On Mon, 06 Aug 2007 22:55:41 -0500 James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I really, *really* think we need a pre-release tree that consists of all
the upstream targetted features (i.e. all of the for the next merge
window git trees) and nothing else.
That *is* -mm. The vast majority of -mm is the 75-odd subsystem trees.
Not quite.
-mm is git trees plus an amazing amount of random patches that turned up
on LKML, a lot of which is not destined for kernel release 2.6.(X+1) or
2.6.(X+2),
Plus, an *amazing* amount of stuff turns up in the git trees which was
committed just a few days prior to the merge window opening, or even after
it opening.
Yes :( That's a tough problem to solve, too.
Deadlines always motivate people, and so -- as in almost every other
software project I've worked with -- everybody seems to submit their
work on the day of the deadline.
Realistically, for the merge window to work perfectly, each step down
the maintainership ladder needs to have time to review and integrate the
changes destined for that merge window. Ideally, people would do all
this work beforehand, so that each step up the ladder has time prior to
merge window for review and testing.
But that's just not software engineers as we know them ;-)
The lack of a tree like this that we could have
persuaded people to test for the last month is what's causing us to
scramble like this at the closure of the merge window.
Nope. The scramble is caused by subsystem maintainers jamming stuff into
mainline at the last minute so they don't have to sit on it for the next
two months.
Indeed. Particularly in this case, where bsg didn't really grace -mm at
all.
Look. If we're serious about this then the rule needs to be something like
If it wasn't committed to your tree *at least* two weeks prior to the
2.6.x merge window opening, it shouldn't go into 2.6.x.
People are not presently observing this sort of discipline by a metric
mile. And I'm not sure that we should, really.
My goal AT A MINIMUM with netdev and libata is to get stuff in at least
one -mm release prior to merge window opening (though preferably a
longer lead time than that). Of course, reality intrudes, but that's my
goal.
And I think it's a reasonable goal to push upon others (but I'm biased:))
Jeff
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