Bill Davidsen wrote:Perhaps I misread what Linus said, the issue I was suggesting be addressed was one of clarity to the testers, not the developers. The releases identified as test would be for evaluation, while the ones identified as rc would really be candidates with no "fix before next version" bugs known. I would think that between test releases some bugs could be fixed, but new features could be added. That would encourage more active testing without overly slowing the development process.I think it would help if you went back to using meaningful names for releases, because 2.6.19-test1 is pretty clearly a test release even to people who can't figure out if a number is odd or even. Then after people stop reporting show stoppers, change to rc numbers, where rc versions are actually candidates for release without known major bugs.
Actually, considering our group of developers, I think "-rc" has been remarkably successful at staying on the "bug fixes only" theme.