Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262111AbVADVVv (ORCPT ); Tue, 4 Jan 2005 16:21:51 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262119AbVADVVr (ORCPT ); Tue, 4 Jan 2005 16:21:47 -0500 Received: from THUNK.ORG ([69.25.196.29]:25255 "EHLO thunker.thunk.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262111AbVADVT3 (ORCPT ); Tue, 4 Jan 2005 16:19:29 -0500 Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2005 16:19:10 -0500 From: "Theodore Ts'o" To: Horst von Brand Cc: Thomas Graf , Bill Davidsen , Adrian Bunk , Diego Calleja , Willy Tarreau , wli@holomorphy.com, aebr@win.tue.nl, solt2@dns.toxicfilms.tv, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: starting with 2.7 Message-ID: <20050104211910.GB7280@thunk.org> Mail-Followup-To: Theodore Ts'o , Horst von Brand , Thomas Graf , Bill Davidsen , Adrian Bunk , Diego Calleja , Willy Tarreau , wli@holomorphy.com, aebr@win.tue.nl, solt2@dns.toxicfilms.tv, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <20050104031229.GE26856@postel.suug.ch> <200501041534.j04FY9g7008583@laptop11.inf.utfsm.cl> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <200501041534.j04FY9g7008583@laptop11.inf.utfsm.cl> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040907i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2245 Lines: 42 On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 12:34:09PM -0300, Horst von Brand wrote: > Thomas Graf said: > > * Theodore Ts'o <20050104002452.GA8045@thunk.org> 2005-01-03 19:24 > > > I was thinking more about every week or two (ok, two releases in a day > > > like we used to do in the 2.3 days was probably too freequent :-), but > > > sure, even going to a once-a-month release cycle would be better than > > > the current 3 months between 2.6.x releases. > > > It definitely satifies many of the impatients but it doesn't solve the > > stability problem. Many bugs do not show up on developer machines until > > just right after the release (as you pointed out already). rc releases > > don't work out as expected due to various reasons, i think one of them > > is that rc releases don't get announced on the newstickers, extra work > > is required to patch the kernel etc. What about doing a test release > > just before releasing the final version. I'm not talking about yet > > another 2 weeks period but rather just 2-3 days and at most 2 bk > > releases in between. > > And most users will just wait the extra 2 or 3 days before timidly dipping > in. Doesn't work. Some will start testing right away, others will wait 2 or 3 days first. And that's fine. Not all 2.6.x kernels will be good; but if we do releases every 1 or 2 weeks, some of them *will* be good. The problem with the -rc releases is that we try to predict in advance which releases in advance will be stable, and we don't seem to be able to do a good job of that. If we do a release every week, my guess is that at least 1 in 3 releases will turn out to be stable enough for most purposes. But we won't know until after 2 or 3 days which releases will be the good ones. In practice, that's all the -rc releases are these days anyway (there are times when a 2.6.x-rcy release is more stable than 2.6.z). The problem is that since the -rc releases are called what they are called, they don't get enough testing. - Ted - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/