Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 4 Nov 2013 20:53:15 +0100 | Subject | Re: Linux 3.12 released .. and no merge window yet .. and 4.0 plans? | From | Geert Uytterhoeven <> |
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On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 8:08 PM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer@fedoraproject.org> wrote: >>> So I may be pessimistic, but I'd expect many developers would go "Let's >>> hunt bugs.. Wait. Oooh, shiny" and go off doing some new feature after >>> all instead. Or just take that release off. >>> >>> But I do wonder.. Maybe it would be possible, and I'm just unfairly >>> projecting my own inner squirrel onto other kernel developers. If we >>> have enough heads-up that people *know* that for one release (and >>> companies/managers know that too) the only patches that get accepted are >>> the kind that fix bugs, maybe people really would have sufficient >>> attention span that it could work. >>> >>> And the reason I mention "4.0" is that it would be a lovely time to do >>> that. Roughly a years heads-up that "ok, after 3.19 (or whatever), we're >>> doing a release with *just* fixes, and then that becomes 4.0". >>> >>> Comments? >> >> I think the biggest problem wouldn't even be the enforcement of >> bugfixes-only during that 2.5 months period, or kernel developers >> surviving such a long streak of boredom, but v3.19 would also probably be >> a super-stressful release to maintainers, as everyone would try to cram >> their feature in there. And if anything important misses that window then >> it's a +5 months wait... > > I'd agree with that, but it wouldn't be limited to just the final > non-bugfix release. It would be a year-long "shove as much as we can > in" push, and I'd be fearful of doing any distro kernel based on any > one of those releases. Clearly the subsystem maintainers would still > be fighting the good fight, but I'm concerned they'd be overwhelmed > and/or burnt out by the time 4.0 came around.
I'm afraid to avoid that, you have to do the bug-fixing release *now*, without early warning...
Yes, it screws all short-term planning, but it relieves the stress from all maintainters, and puts the stress/blame on a single person, of which we all know he can handle it and say "no".
Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
Geert
-- Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org
In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that. -- Linus Torvalds
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