Messages in this thread | | | Subject | This is [Re:] How to improve the quality of the kernel[?]. | Date | Tue, 19 Jun 2007 06:06:47 +0200 | From | Oleg Verych <> |
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[Dear Debbug developers, i wish your ideas will be useful.]
* From: Linus Torvalds * Newsgroups: gmane.linux.kernel * Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 17:09:37 -0700 (PDT) > > On Mon, 18 Jun 2007, Martin Bligh wrote: >> >> Sorry to be a wet blanket, but I've seen those sort of things >> before, and they just don't seem to work, especially in the >> environment we're in with such a massive diversity of hardware. > > I do agree. It _sounds_ like a great idea to try to control the flow of > patches better,
There were some ideas, i will try to summarize:
* New Patches (or sets) need tracking, review, testing
Zero (tracking) done by sending (To, or bcc) [RFC] patch to something like submit@pts.e-mail.example.com (like BTS now). Notifications will be sent to intrested maintainers (if meta-information is ok) or testers (see below)
First is mostly done by maintainers or interested individuals. Result is "Acked-by" and "Cc" entries in the next patch sent. Due to lack of tracking this things are done manually, are generally in trusted manner. But bad like <200706172053.41806.bzolnier@gmail.com> sometimes happens.
When patch in sent to this PTS, your lovely checkpatch/check-whatever-crap-has-being-sent tools can be set up as gatekeepers, thus making impossible stupid errors with MIME coding, line wrapping, whatever style you've came up with now in checking sent crap.
* Tracking results of review (Acked-by).
This can be mostly e-mail exchange with comments and agreements. "Acked-by" semantic may be implemented in form of contlol message to tracking system, and this system will generate e-mail confirmation to the patch author in form of "Acked-by: Developer's Name <message-id of e-mail with acke-by>"
Thus, next patch will have this entry. And if testing of this version ir regression happens, there's info about who is/was interested/involved.
* Testing.
Mainly same for "Tested-by" (newly suggested by Stefan <4675C083.6080409@s5r6.in-berlin.de>)
|-*- Feature Needed -*- Addition, needed is hardware user tested have/had/used. Currently ``reportbug'' tool includes packed specific and system specific additions automaticly gathered and inserted to e-mail sent to BTS. (e.g. <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.kernel/29740>)
Formats of that hardware profile(as system information in reportbug) . arch . chipset . hdd . vga ... in meaningful fields, and not just lspci -v[vv]. If additional info (-vvv) or something required, profile can be exteded.
For kernel's sub-system information(as packed info): . subsystem/driver/kernel version (or similar) . maintainers must know what they need to see more here
|-*- back to patches -*-
Last and not least tast cases, that everyone might came up with.
All formats this can be agreed (or implemented and updated latter) and inserted automaticly.
* Commit. Id is recorded, patch archived. But any additions are welcome, regressions will pop up this patch again (reopen in BTS).
> but in the end, it needs to also be easy and painfree to the people > involved, and also make sure that any added workflow doesn't require > even *more* load and expertise on the already often overworked > maintainers..
Experienced BTS users and developers. Please, correct me if i'm wrong. At least e-mail part of Debian's BTS and whole idea of it is *exactly* what is needed. Bugzilla fans, you can still use you useless pet, because Debian developers have done things, to track and e-mail states of bugs: <http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.kernel/29736>
> In many cases, I think it tends to *sound* great to try to avoid > regressions in the first place - but it also sounds like one of those "I > wish the world didn't work the way it did" kind of things. A worthy goal, > but not necessarily one that is compatible with reality.
I wish perl hackers out there will join this yet-new effort. I know there many of them out there, writing kilobytes of checkfile and checkpatch (i've wrote in few lines of ``sed'').
BTS is written on perl, but any interoperability interface, like stdin/stdout for python or shell hackers is worth of thinking about.
Please, see more and make useful follows ups: http://bugs.debian.org/
Please, do not (<46772321.9080602@mbligh.org>) """ I know you hate bugzilla ... but at least I can try to make that bit of the process work better. """ [here's you fancy checkbox...]
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