Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 1 May 2008 12:58:43 -0700 | From | Andrew Morton <> | Subject | Re: Slow DOWN, please!!! |
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On Thu, 1 May 2008 20:37:14 +0100 Al Viro <viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> * patches should be visible *when* *they* *can* *be* *changed*. > If it's "Linus had pulled from linux-foo.git and that included a merge > from linux-foobar.git, which is developed on foobar-wank@hell.knows.where", > it's too late. It's not just that you don't revert; it's that you _can't_ > realistically revert in such situation - not without very massive work. > And I don't know what _can_ be done about that, other than making it > socially discouraged. To some extent it's OK, but my impression is that > some areas are as bad as CVS-based "communities" had been and switch to > git has simply hidden the obvious signs of trouble...
Yup. I think the only sane+scalable way of making this happen is to prevail upon the 100-odd subsystem maintainers to keep an eye out for code which should be exposed to additional eyes.
There are of course many reasons _why_ such code needs the attention of others, and those reasons have varying strengths. Off the top of my head:
- modifies stuff outside the designated subsystem (eg: lib/pcounter.c - thanks Pavel)
- (having just spent an hour looking at drivers/net/sfc/ and having boggled at its bitmap.h): adds generic-looking infrastructure which should be in core kernel. Or already _is_ in core kernel.
- Adds any kernel<->user interface which is not of the the most trivial&standard form
- Futzes with memory management internals, adds pagefault handlers, etc.
- Ditto vfs things, I guess
- In any way attempts to work around _any_ shortcoming of any other part of the kernel!
- Does anything RCU related. Every time I cc Paul on an rcu-using patch, he finds holes in it.
- add your own here.
But we won't find such code by going out and looking for it - we do need the recipients of that code to say "hey, others might want to see this". That's very low-effort for the hey-sayer, so I expect we can do better here quite easily.
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