Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 27 Jul 1996 15:08:21 -0400 (EDT) | From | Racer X <> | Subject | Re: This is really Ridiculous |
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On Sat, 27 Jul 1996, Michael Elizabeth Chastain wrote:
> I think that some of the changes introduced since 2.0 were too big for a > 2.0 release.
Hear, hear. I was shocked to find out that the version number was actually being set at 2.0. I thought, at the very least, we should stay at 1.4.
The 1.3 series had not really, _REALLY_, been anything close to stable since about 1.3.54 or so, maybe before that. I remember when procps broke around 1.3.56 or so (the first of many such breakages), and I was relieved when 1.3.58 was announced as the "code freeze" release. We had just gotten past that libc-make thing, and then the procps problem, and it was high time to actually sit down and clean up the code.
Why was there never any "code freeze"? If I'm not mistaken, the ISDN support was added just a week or so later. Since then there have been a ton of things added or changed in the kernel, and most of them haven't been adequately tested. A short list includes - the addition of a number of new SCSI and IDE drivers, the addition of some new IP options, the addition of - get this - bridging code. Was the bridging code so important that it couldn't wait a couple of months? Near the end of 1.3, Linux had more features and options than most new cars.
We've even been adding code into the 2.0 releases (the merging in of the FreeBSD NCR53c810 driver, which hasn't worked for me and a number of friends, for starters) - a release that, according to the various FAQ's & README's, should be a stable, production-quality kernel.
This is all pretty pointless, I guess. It's not like we're going to go back on the numbers and start over at 1.4. But I think we should learn a few things from the past development cycle. The 1.0/1.1 cycle was actually very well-organized, if I remember correctly. All the bugs were out by 1.0.9, and the 1.1 series froze about 1.1.70 (I think), and there was an actual freeze and plenty of bug busting. 1.2 was a release that almost everyone was proud of, and everyone agreed that it was ready for release.
Let's try to make the 2.0/2.1 series more like the 1.0/1.1 series, and less like the 1.2/1.3. We're already at 2.0.10; that alone makes me worry about the true stability of this release.
shag
Judd Bourgeois | When we are planning for posterity, shagboy@bluesky.net | we ought to remember that virtue is Finger for PGP key | not hereditary. Thomas Paine
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