| |||||||||||
Kernel Summit: Development processKernel Summit: Development processPosted Jul 24, 2004 0:05 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)Parent article: Kernel Summit: Development process There is some confusion over what "stable" means. Many people seem to think it means "doesn't crash." There are better terms for that (like "doesn't crash"). What "stable" really means is "doesn't change." It describes the branch, not the code at the head of it. The correlation, of course, is that the way you make code bug free is to stop changing it, and when it's bug free, you don't have to change it. The 2.6 branch is not stable at all. It's changing like crazy. Until there is at the very least some other branch to draw the attention of the coders, it will continue to change. The death of the Linux stable/development system is due to the long release cycles. Developers want their stuff to get into users' hands some time before they retire. The users won't touch an unstable branch, so the stable branch is where it goes. Which destabilizes the branch. Incidentally, the common strategy of putting bug fixes and not features in the stable branch is wrong. The right strategy is to put code changes with a low risk/reward ratio in the stable branch and those with a high risk/reward ratio in the development branch. Both bug fixes and features can fit in either of those categories.
(Log in to post comments)
|
|||||||||||