> It's clear that a volunteer effort with minimal funding can't be
> expected to deliver the sort of rigorous testing one hopes a major
> company would do but there are all too many posts to this list which,
> in effect, say "oh, silly me, make the ':' on line 102 a ';'". These
> are not subtle errors or problems of interaction but problems with
> typographical errors and misspelled variables, etc.
That's true. But I don't think it's that serious a problem - that sort of
thing is very easy to fix, and personally I'd far rather have missing
semicolons than subtle race conditions. It's very rare for that sort of
bug to last more than one kernel version, and they don't happen very often
when you consider the number of changes that go on in each patch.
Mistakes happen.
Yes, it would be nice for people to compile their code and make sure it
works before it's submitted. I can't honestly believe that there are any
developers around who don't realise that in an ideal world they ought to
test their code. In reality though people are often faced with having to
send out patches in a hurry, and so this sort of goof slips through
occasionally. I think we all just have to quit moaning and live with it.
P.