Re: Stop the Linux kernel madness

[Jens Axboe]

On Fri, Jun 18 2004, Andrew Morton wrote:
> Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Maintaining a patch for one version of the distribution, in
> > order to get a feature to customers sooner, is perfectly
> > doable and may make economic sense.
> > 
> > Maintaining an out-of-tree patch forever because you didn't
> > get around to merging it into the upstream kernel doesn't.
> 
> Problem is, what happens if vendor X ships a feature and that feature is
> deemed unacceptable for the kernel.org kernel?

Very good question, as these features/patches are often the ones that
are ugliest and the hardest to maintain. Or the ones that make you
slightly source incompatible with mainline, which is always ugly.

> There are examples of this and as I've earlier indicated, I'd be OK with
> merging some fairly stinky things after 2.7 forks off, as a service to the
> major kernel.org customers and as a general lets-keep-things-in-sync
> exercise.

Within reason (I trust your taste and judgement completely), I fully
support that and think this is key to maintaing closer proximity between
mainline and vendor kernels. There are _always_ going to be uglies
(don't ask me why)...

> But we then need to do it all again in 2.8.x.  It's hard to see how to fix
> this apart from either merging everything into the main tree or dropping
> things from vendor trees.  Or waiting for someone to come up with an
> acceptable form of whatever it is the patch does.

Wish I had an answer for that. Things can and do get dropped from vendor
trees, doesn't cover all cases naturally.

-- 
Jens Axboe

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