Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Any thoughts about making -rc's into -pre's, and doing real -rc's?
I think what we have is OK. The idea is that once 2.6.9 is released we
merge up all the well-tested code which is sitting in various trees and has
been under test for a few weeks. As soon as all that well-tested code is
merged, we go into -rc. So we're pipelining the development of 2.6.10 code
with the stabilisation of 2.6.9.
If someone goes and develops *new* code after the release of, say, 2.6.9
then tough tittie, it's too late for 2.6.9: we don't want new code - we
want old-n-tested code. So your typed-in-after-2.6.9 code goes into
2.6.11.
That's the theory anyway. If it means that it takes a long time to get
code into the kernel.org tree, well, that's a cost. That latency may be
high but the bandwidth is pretty good.
There are exceptions of course. Completely new
drivers/filesystems/architectures can go in any old time becasue they won't
break existing setups. Although I do tend to hold back on even these in
the (probably overoptimistic) hope that people will then concentrate on
mainline bug fixing and testing.
It would have caught the NFS bug that made 2.6.8.1, and probably
the cd burning problems... Or is Linus' patching finger just too
itchy?
uh, let's say that incident was "proof by counter example".