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Bypassing linux-next
It has been almost three years since the creation of the linux-next tree; during that
time, it has become an indispensable part of the kernel development
process. By the time code is merged into the mainline during the merge
window, it has already seen a fair amount of integration and compilation
testing in linux-next - and even some actual run testing. That has helped
to make the merge window run more smoothly. So it's not surprising that
developers are getting increasingly grumpy when code is seen to be
circumventing linux-next and creating problems in the mainline.
We've had a couple of examples of that grumpiness in the 2.6.38 cycle. When Al Viro posted his first VFS pull request, linux-next maintainer Stephen Rothwell complained that this was his first sighting of that code, despite the fact that it had apparently been around for a few months. Al is known for pulling together mainline submissions at the last minute, so this sort of thing is not entirely surprising; it remains to be seen whether he can be pushed into changing his ways. The other complaint came after the merging of the transparent huge pages patch set, which went in by way of Andrew Morton's -mm tree. Tony Luck, having discovered that the ia64 architecture no longer built in the mainline, asked:
Didn't Andrew make some rash promise at kernel summit about
stopping eating if "-mm" wasn't included in linux-next by the end
of November? Must be getting pretty hungry by now.
Andrew responded that "It's taking a while - Stephen and I are discussing a plan." Integrating -mm was always going to be a bit of a challenge; linux-next is supposed to contain code which is ready for merging into the mainline, while -mm can carry under-development code for years. Until that gets worked out, though, memory management developers are going to be in a bit of a difficult position; there is no maintainer tree they can get into which feeds into linux-next. Those developers will need to either get their own trees into linux-next (an easy thing to do) or take the complaints when code which lived in -mm is seen by testers for the first time when it hits the mainline. (Log in to post comments)
Bypassing linux-next Posted Jan 20, 2011 16:34 UTC (Thu) by kirkengaard (subscriber, #15022) [Link]
"Those developers will need to either get their own trees into linux-next (an easy thing to do) or take the complaints when code which lived in -mm is seen by testers for the first time when it hits the mainline."
Odd, I was of the impression that the whole point of -mm was that it let people use code and test it before it was shipped upstream. Have we deprecated that code path?
Bypassing linux-next Posted Jan 20, 2011 17:42 UTC (Thu) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]
linux-next is suppose to take over that role. But it is only to have things that are considered ready for upstream. Not at the redesign phase. -mm can have things still being redesigned. Perhaps what is needed is to have the new features that finally have a stable design to move from -mm to linux-next. And then from linux-next to mainline.
I guess this means that Andrew's work flow should go to linux-next and after a bit of time, that same code can go to Linus.
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