Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 02 Mar 2005 21:26:23 -0800 | From | "Randy.Dunlap" <> | Subject | Re: RFD: Kernel release numbering |
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Dave Jones wrote: > On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 08:38:12PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote: > > Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com> wrote: > > > > > > On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 04:00:46PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > > > > > > I would not keep regular driver updates from a 2.6.<even> thing. > > > > > > Then the notion of it being stable is bogus, given how many regressions > > > the last few kernels have brought in drivers. Moving from 2.6.9 -> 2.6.10 > > > broke ALSA, USB, parport, firewire, and countless other little bits and > > > pieces that users tend to notice. > > > > Grump. Have all these regressions received the appropriate level of > > visibility on this mailing list? > > For the most part these things are usually known about by their upstream > authors. To give an example: ALSA update in 2.6.10 broke sound for a > bunch of IBM thinkpads. As it turns out there are quite a lot of these > out there, so when I released a 2.6.10 update for Fedora, bugzilla lit > up like a christmas tree with "Hey, where'd my sound go?" reports. > (It was further confused by a load of other sound card problems, but > thats another issue). This got so out of control, Alan asked the ALSA > folks to take a look, and iirc Takashi figured out what had caused the > problem, and it got fixed in the ALSA folks tree, and subsequently, in 2.6.11rc. > > Now, during all this time, there hadn't been any reports of this problem > at all on Linux-kernel. Not even from Linus' tree, let alone -mm. > Which amazes me given how widespread the problem was. > > > I too am a little put off by the number of regressions which certain > > (admittedly tricky) subsystems keep on introducing. One does wonder how > > careful people are being at the development stage. And that's a thing > > which we can surely fix. > > For example, here's today's crop (so far): > > > > include/linux/soundcard.h:195: warning: `_PATCHKEY' redefined > > include/linux/awe_voice.h:33: warning: this is the location of the previous definition > > compile time regressions we should be able to nail down fairly easily. > (someone from OSDL is already doing compile stats and such on each release > [too bad they're mostly incomprehensible to the casual viewer]) > The bigger problem is runtime testing. If things aren't getting the > exposure they need, we're going to get screwed over by something or other > every time Linus bk pull's some random driver repo.
I'll ding the OSDL release builder about that (I agree with you)....
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