Re: [git pull] x86 changes for v2.6.27

From: Linus Torvalds
Date: Mon Jul 14 2008 - 16:50:09 EST




On Mon, 14 Jul 2008, Ingo Molnar wrote:
>
> Please pull the latest x86 git tree from:
>
> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip.git x86/for-linus

Things like this _really_ irritate me:

Memtest (MEMTEST) [Y/n/?] (NEW) ?

why the hell is that defaulting to "on"?

The rule of thumb should be:

NO NEW FEATURES SHOULD _EVER_ DEFAULT TO 'ON'!

I do realize that developers always think that _their_ particular cool new
feature is so important that it should default to 'on', but that's always
the case, and it's _always_ wrong.

The only really acceptable reason to add a new config feature and make it
default to 'y' is that it's actually an old feature that just didn't have
a config option, so not defaulting to it will actually break peoples
existing configurations.

If some distro wants to enable features by default for their users, that's
their issue. But we should not do it for them.

Linus
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/