Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: Linux versioning scheme | Date | Wed, 23 Jun 1999 13:58:02 +0200 (MEST) | From | (Rogier Wolff) |
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thomas lakofski wrote: > On 22 Jun 1999, Ramana Juvvadi wrote: > > > Development --- kernel developers only > > Beta --- Adventorous users only > > Stable -- No serious bug reported in the past x days > > I think by labelling some development branch versions as suitable for use > by adventurous users the 'beta' goal could be achieved. 'Suitable,' > meaning unlikely to cause permanent damage to your system. This would > also have the added benefit of giving wider testing in the development > branch, without having to maintain three codebases. Interesting idea > though. We may see the objective of getting fresher code into the hands > of the adventurous happening anyway with the soon-ish release of 2.4.
The problem is that some complicated changes were made. Those affect the whole system. So while 2.3.8 may work for a whole bunch of people we can be pretty sure that it will break for others. Sure, Linus is optimistic about it.
If I make agraphical representation of the trajectory from 2.3.0 to 2.4.0, it could look like this:
Read the "X" as "change made" and the "---" as "change still hase some problems.
2.3.0 .8 2.3.99 2.4.0
a X--------- b X----- c X--------------------------- d X------------------------------ e X------ f X-------------
So, as you can see, there is no moment in the development where everything is sorted out. All we can say is "everyone for himself". If it works for you, it might be that you aren't affected by problem C. That could be because you don't have an SMP machine....
It's a free world. Feel free to try and mark releases as "more stable than others", for the good of the whole community. However, be warned that this is a very hard task. You'll have to wade through the bugreports that simply report "bad hardware". You'll get angry users on your back if you mark a version "good" which happens to thrash a filesystem (even if it was their bad hardware that actually caused the filesystem corruption....).
Roger.
-- ** R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl ** http://www.BitWizard.nl/ ** +31-15-2137555 ** *-- BitWizard writes Linux device drivers for any device you may have! --* ------ Microsoft SELLS you Windows, Linux GIVES you the whole house ------
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