Re: help w/ SPARC stuff

Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Tue, 29 Sep 1998 11:17:30 -0700 (PDT)


On Tue, 29 Sep 1998, Mike Wangsmo wrote:
> >
> >No, I want Linus to be pressured to put these changes in.

Putting "pressure" on me is just the wrong thing to do. It makes my just
hate you guys even more. Don't go that way, you'll just find me even
harder to work with.

> Ok, so I ask again (and why the hell are you up this early also?), what is
> Linus' reason for not applying the patches?

Linu's reason for not applying the patches is that I get this frigging big
patch with no explanations of what it does.

I applied the generic non-driver-specific parts, and people promised me it
wouldn't hurt. It hurt, because it turns out that the patch contained
parts that _were_ driver-specific after all. Should that make me happy?
No, it just makes me even more stronly feel that I want the vger patch
explained.

David has gone through this. He _should_ know how this is handled, but
apparently he has forgotten. He split up his vger backlog into reasonable
patches, and added a explanation to the top of them. And he found out that
I do apply the patches when it's done that way.

If patches come to me without explanation, I apply them only if I can look
at the patch and say "ok, that's right, obviously I should apply this".
But for larger patches I _require_ that the person who sends me the patch
do more than say "ok, this is the sync-up with vger".

The fact that this is painful to do for patch maintainers is irrelevant.
Because quite frankly, I'd rather spread the pain than take it all onto
myself. And if they had done the patches on a more timely basis instead of
buffering them all up, it would be less of a pain.

Linus

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