Re: 2.1.83: Sound, SB16, Modules, MIDI?

Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
Thu, 5 Feb 1998 10:01:45 +0000 (GMT)


> It depends. There are people who are generaly recognized as uber-hackers...
> Alan, Bill, Linus (in alphebetical order by first name -- not in order of
> importance <G>). There contributions are generaly going to make it into the
> offical tree, sooner or later. There are also maintainers of vairous peices

Oh don't believe that. Linus can be quite explicit about code he doesnt like
and won't be going into his tree whoever wrote it ;)

> (mostly drivers). They can do pretty much whatever they want to those
> peices, and Linus will take patch-sets from them. But Linus can change any
> code he wants, though if you are modifing a mantained driver, it is
> considered more civilized to go through them.

People do occasionally do things like send me a driver saying "Can you put
this in the kernel for me", I just bounce those to the proper place anyway
unless its directly related to stuff Im working on/with. I do often pick up
build and test bits from the kernel list as a sort of ongoing hoover mode,
mostly little fixes that seem to have gotten overlooked.

> The normal way seems to be:
> 1) Write the New Way in, breaking all the drivers.
> 2) Change one driver as an example.
> 3) Write a sepperate patch that steps on everyone's toes, or declare
> everything obsolete <G>.

Not until after 2.2 please. Also external API's are generally sacred even
if you shred the internals occasionally.

Alan