At the July 2004 kernel summit, it was decided that the current 2.6 development process with teamwork between Andrew Morton [interview] and Linux creator Linus Torvalds was proving quite effective. The process involves using Andrew's test -mm tree [forum] as a staging area for patches prior to going into Linus' mainline tree [forum]. The system has allowed for continued evolution and new features in the 2.6 stable kernel, however it has also lead to a fair amount of discussion and debate [story]. Much of the concern is that with new features constantly being introduced, true stabilization may not be possible.

One theory presented on the lkml was that the process has changed because, "these days nobody wants to be a stable-release maintainer anymore. It's boring." 2.2 maintainer Alan Cox [story] disagreed, "that depends what kind of an engineer you are. Just as there are people who love standards body work and compliance testing/debugging there are people who care about stable trees." When asked if he was willing to maintain a stable 2.6.x kernel, Alan replied, "I'll do it if Linus wants". That is, while 2.6.10 is being developed, the suggestion is to continue to stabalize 2.6.9, releasing 2.6.9.1, 2.6.9.2, etc. And when 2.6.10 is released, to then focus on stabalizing it. Alan already maintains a 2.6-ac patchset [forum] which includes a growing number of bugfixes. However he notes that it is not intended to be all-inclusive, "the goal of -ac is to contain the stuff I personally consider important. A lot of the smaller bugfixes individually are fine but a 'complete set of bugfixes' turns into a large change set and then needs an entire validation and release cycle of its own."

From: Diego Calleja [email blocked]
To:  hzhong
Subject: Re: My thoughts on the "new development model"
Date: 	Tue, 26 Oct 2004 20:53:48 +0200

El Tue, 26 Oct 2004 09:58:41 -0700 "Hua Zhong" [email blocked] escribió:

> The fact is, these days nobody wants to be a stable-release maintainer
> anymore. It's boring.

I doubt it. People like Alan Cox or Marcello have done it in the past, and I 
bet many others could do it. Not everybody uses the latest -mm available in
their machines.



From: Alan Cox [email blocked]
Subject: RE: My thoughts on the "new development model"
Date: 	Wed, 27 Oct 2004 16:30:00 +0100

On Maw, 2004-10-26 at 17:58, Hua Zhong wrote:
> The fact is, these days nobody wants to be a stable-release maintainer
> anymore. It's boring.

That depends what kind of an engineer you are. Just as there are people
who love standards body work and compliance testing/debugging there are
people who care about stable trees.



From: Hua Zhong [email blocked]
Subject: RE: My thoughts on the "new development model"
Date: 	Wed, 27 Oct 2004 11:37:34 -0700

> On Maw, 2004-10-26 at 17:58, Hua Zhong wrote:
> > The fact is, these days nobody wants to be a stable-release 
> >maintainer anymore. It's boring.
> 
> That depends what kind of an engineer you are. Just as there 
> are people who love standards body work and compliance 
> testing/debugging there are people who care about stable trees.

Absolutely agreed. There are folks around me who can do one thing much
better than the other.

When I said "nobody", I really meant "top kernel developers". I have not
seen anyone step up and say "I'll volunteer to maintain a 2.6 stable
release" hence the comment.

This is actually not a problem caused by the new development model per se.
The same thing might have happened with 2.4. You know what I'm talking
about. Most talented people just like new challenges instead of maintaining
old code.

However, there are some things that make this situation worse by the new
model.
1. No official stable releases and thus no official maintainers. 2.6 is no
longer a stable release. 2.6.x might be. And Linus doesn't seem to plan to
endorse anyone for this job. Previously, Linus could appoint someone and
even if he is not really well-known, people would eventually accept him, but
now it's not the case anymore. More importantly, if there is no official
stable releases, whom do other people send bug fixes to? From both user and
developer perspective, this is very hard to work out.

2. The new version scheme. Now a stable release has to be 2.6.x. So instead
of being a 2.6 maintainer, you might be called a 2.6.x maintainer. One extra
number, less importance and recognicion, and less motivation for volunteers
to show up (especially for relatively new people). Just common psychology.
:)

These are just my observations. As far as I can see only two things will
help:
1. Appoint an official 2.6 maintainer. Be it someone Linus appoints, or
someone like Alan Cox who volunteers. :-)
2. This maintainer will not be stuck at only one 2.6.x version. Instead, he
maintains 2.6.x for a while until it is stable enough, and then move up to
2.6.y (y>x), and start the stabilization again.

Hua



From: Alan Cox [email blocked]
Subject: RE: My thoughts on the "new development model"
Date: 	Wed, 27 Oct 2004 22:39:16 +0100

On Mer, 2004-10-27 at 19:37, Hua Zhong wrote:
> When I said "nobody", I really meant "top kernel developers". I have not
> seen anyone step up and say "I'll volunteer to maintain a 2.6 stable
> release" hence the comment.

I'll do it if Linus wants



From: Alan Cox [email blocked]
Subject: Re: My thoughts on the "new development model"
Date: 	Wed, 27 Oct 2004 16:31:58 +0100

On Maw, 2004-10-26 at 20:33, Paul Fulghum wrote:
> ...and probably suffer emotional scars from the process.
> Taming the patch stream must be like drinking from a fire hose
> while herding angry, computer literate cats.
> Wearing, but not boring.

For 2.2 certainly and I suspect for 2.4 it's also like that. The
2.6.x.[1-n] is more like distribution maintenance its about careful
analysis and minimal changes.




From: Alan Cox [email blocked]
Subject: Re: Let's make a small change to the process
Date: 	Wed, 27 Oct 2004 16:05:17 +0100

On Mer, 2004-10-27 at 03:17, Chuck Ebbert wrote:
> > If the goal of -ac is to only include those fixes, why can't we rename
> > it in something more "intuitive" for the final users ?
> > Do you see what I mean ?
> 
>   AFAICT -ac is not supposed to be a complete collection of bugfixes.
>   2.6.9-ac3 was certainly missing a lot of them (haven't seen -ac4 yet.)

The goal of -ac is to contain the stuff I personally consider important.
A lot of the smaller bugfixes individually are fine but a 'complete set
of bugfixes' turns into a large change set and then needs an entire
validation and release cycle of its own.

Each 2.6.10rc change I merged is on the basis of reward >> risk.

I don't care if its 2.6.9-ac or 2.6.9.4 personally but it's for Linus to
decide if he wants to do that and who he wants to make keeper of the
2.6.x.y tree if anyone.

Alan



From: Bill Davidsen [email blocked]
Subject: Re: Let's make a small change to the process
Date: 	Wed, 27 Oct 2004 16:38:40 -0400

Alan Cox wrote:
> On Mer, 2004-10-27 at 03:17, Chuck Ebbert wrote:
> 
>>>If the goal of -ac is to only include those fixes, why can't we rename
>>>it in something more "intuitive" for the final users ?
>>>Do you see what I mean ?
>>
>>  AFAICT -ac is not supposed to be a complete collection of bugfixes.
>>  2.6.9-ac3 was certainly missing a lot of them (haven't seen -ac4 yet.)
> 
> 
> The goal of -ac is to contain the stuff I personally consider important.
> A lot of the smaller bugfixes individually are fine but a 'complete set
> of bugfixes' turns into a large change set and then needs an entire
> validation and release cycle of its own.
> 
> Each 2.6.10rc change I merged is on the basis of reward >> risk.

Not to give you a swelled head, but at the moment -ac looks more stable 
than anything else widely available.

-- 
    -bill davidsen (davidsen@tmr.com)
"The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the
  last possible moment - but no longer"  -me

• Archive of above thread
• KernelTrap interview with Alan Cox