Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 18 Jun 2004 23:17:57 +0200 | From | Jens Axboe <> | Subject | Re: Stop the Linux kernel madness |
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On Fri, Jun 18 2004, Andrew Morton wrote: > Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> wrote: > > > > Maintaining a patch for one version of the distribution, in > > order to get a feature to customers sooner, is perfectly > > doable and may make economic sense. > > > > Maintaining an out-of-tree patch forever because you didn't > > get around to merging it into the upstream kernel doesn't. > > Problem is, what happens if vendor X ships a feature and that feature is > deemed unacceptable for the kernel.org kernel?
Very good question, as these features/patches are often the ones that are ugliest and the hardest to maintain. Or the ones that make you slightly source incompatible with mainline, which is always ugly.
> There are examples of this and as I've earlier indicated, I'd be OK with > merging some fairly stinky things after 2.7 forks off, as a service to the > major kernel.org customers and as a general lets-keep-things-in-sync > exercise.
Within reason (I trust your taste and judgement completely), I fully support that and think this is key to maintaing closer proximity between mainline and vendor kernels. There are _always_ going to be uglies (don't ask me why)...
> But we then need to do it all again in 2.8.x. It's hard to see how to fix > this apart from either merging everything into the main tree or dropping > things from vendor trees. Or waiting for someone to come up with an > acceptable form of whatever it is the patch does.
Wish I had an answer for that. Things can and do get dropped from vendor trees, doesn't cover all cases naturally.
-- Jens Axboe
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