Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 10:32:03 -0400
From: "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@MIT.EDU>
In the long run, it will make your life easier, to the extent that
having an up-to-date bug list is easier, and because then I won't
have to continually pester people about whether certain bugs have
been fixed.
Ok, I claim:
1) I always have an uptodate bug list for the things I maintain
2) I always notify you instantly when Linus puts up a pre-patch
that closes bugs in areas I maintain.
3) By going over every diff by hand I (and others) spot bugs that
would not be found easily by testing. It's free code review
to keep going over relative diffs like this as new pre-patches come
out. (I'd say there about 10 to 20 people who, like me,
religiously read over and review the diffs between pre-patches
as they are released. There is _real_ value in this. It won't
all stop due to the patch robot, but you for one aparently will do
it less often than you do now.)
So changing the mechanism is going to make my life easier and better
how?
But still, Ted, I respect you enough that if you are so convinced this
is going to make things better, I'm going to give it a try as is. No
problem.
However, I contend that some of us will feel that they are being
punished for doing a good job thus far without this patch robot.
I don't think the big problem is VFS, MM, or networking bug
tracking/fixing. The big issue really is the drivers, and it's simply
because several of the maintainers of drivers are lackadasical about
doing their job and chasing people down when bug reports are submitted
against them.
If you agree with the previous paragraph, then my final argument is
that forcing these driver "maintainers" to go through the patch robot
system will not necessarily get them to look at the bug list and hunt
people down to fix bugs.
Later,
David S. Miller
davem@redhat.com
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