Stabilizing per-VMA locking

Posted Jul 14, 2023 2:16 UTC (Fri) by jlbec (subscriber, #121932)
Parent article: Stabilizing per-VMA locking

Significant VM changes in major releases that take time and consternation to sort out are time-honored tradition.

Stabilizing per-VMA locking

Posted Jul 14, 2023 4:54 UTC (Fri) by alison (subscriber, #63752) [Link]

Thanks for posting that link into the Wayback Machine: it made me laugh.

Stabilizing per-VMA locking

Posted Jul 15, 2023 0:25 UTC (Sat) by Paf (subscriber, #91811) [Link] (2 responses)

From the perspective of someone who wasn’t around then and has only seen basically the current process, that all sounds just *insane* as a dev process.

2.4.10

Posted Jul 15, 2023 0:40 UTC (Sat) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (1 responses)

The VM switch in 2.4 seemed insane at the time as well. It did seem to stabilize a lot of the persistent problems that had been plaguing that kernel, though; it's been a long time since I've heard anybody who thinks it was the wrong decision.

2.4.10

Posted Jul 16, 2023 19:30 UTC (Sun) by Paf (subscriber, #91811) [Link]

Yeah, I can’t argue with the results. That stood out but I was in fact talking as much about the whole process - the differing branches and the seeming lack of maintainers except Linus. It feels a little like watching a kind of multi-mode high traffic near-chaos flow, the kind that seems - to someone used to orderly traffic - like it should lead to constant crashes but somehow doesn’t (usually :x).