Re: Proposal: Linux Kernel Patch Management System

From: Theodore Y. Ts'o (tytso@MIT.EDU)
Date: Wed Sep 13 2000 - 14:27:45 EST


   From: "Dunlap, Randy" <randy.dunlap@intel.com>
   Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 09:17:55 -0700

   I appreciate Alan and you doing the kernel Status/TODO lists,
   but I think that you ought to simplify it for yourself at
   least (not that this would help Linus) by having maintainers
   do it instead of you do it.

   I'm willing to do it for USB, but I'm not willing to duplicate
   your work if you continue to do it. I don't expect you to
   know/understand all of the filesystem or I/O subsystem or
   VM or process issues and be able to track them without asking
   lots of questions. (Maybe you do, but I don't think that should
   be a requirement of the status-bot.)

Tell you what. If you're willing to handle USB bug reports, I'll
segregate them into one area, and then have you send me updates every
few days.

The updates should hopefully include bug reports from users who post to
linux-kernel. What I currently do is save those e-mail messages in a
mail folder, and then include their names (but not e-mail address) in
the bug list.

   You should roll up reports from maintainers for a summary
   kernel status report.

If maintainers are willing to do a good job capturing bug reports,
that's great. We can break those out into subsystems. The problem is
that sometimes maintainers can get egos involved and not be willing to
admit that something might be a bug, especially if the bug report
doesn't contain full information. This works much better if the
subsystem is maintained by a team, and one person of that team is
responsible for the overal bug tracking for that subsystem. It sounds
like the USB subsystem meets this criteria quite handily.

   PS: This is probably too good to be true and would require
   the assistance of lots of maintainers, but that's how it
   should be done IMO.

Well, yes, and in a perfect world Linus would be using a bug tracking
system. But we've managed quite well despite that not being the case. :-)

                                                - Ted
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