Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756330AbXHaXCq (ORCPT ); Fri, 31 Aug 2007 19:02:46 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751899AbXHaXCf (ORCPT ); Fri, 31 Aug 2007 19:02:35 -0400 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([66.187.233.31]:55669 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751716AbXHaXCe (ORCPT ); Fri, 31 Aug 2007 19:02:34 -0400 Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 19:02:15 -0400 From: Dave Jones To: "Robert P. J. Day" Cc: Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: maturity and status and attributes, oh my! Message-ID: <20070831230215.GF11499@redhat.com> Mail-Followup-To: Dave Jones , "Robert P. J. Day" , Linux Kernel Mailing List References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.14 (2007-02-12) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2385 Lines: 52 On Fri, Aug 31, 2007 at 05:38:34PM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > it may be that some people had a different understanding of what was > meant by "maturity" than i did. what *i* meant by that attribute is > a feature's current position in the normal software life cycle, and > that would be one of: > > experimental -> normal (stable) -> deprecated -> obsolete Life isn't so black and white. * We have stuff go into the tree that isn't experimental on a regular basis, due to proving outside of Linus' tree, be that in -mm, or a distro tree, or anywhere else. * We've had code become undeprecated a few times. * Likewise stuff has sometimes got so fucked up that it's become experimental again (see the longhaul driver for a great example of a catastrophe in motion). > it's a natural progression and, at any point, a feature cannot > possibly have more than one maturity value. it would be as absurd as > saying that someone was a teenager *and* was a twenty-something at the > same time. not possible. Again, not so black and white. It's feasible that something can be experimental on one architecture, stable on another (typically x86), or even deprecated on x86, but still supported on other architectures. It's not just a per arch thing either, in some cases, we've had differing levels of maturity based upon other hardware constraints, or even varying versions of system software. > another attribute can then be what i was calling "status" but could > also be called "quality". *that* is where you could categorize a > feature as one of FLAKY, BROKEN and so on. that's an entirely > independent categorization from maturity, which means you could have > features that were both experimental and flaky, or deprecated and > broken, or what have you. and those settings would be done with > separate Kconfig directives: Kconfig is an awful mechanism for tracking whether something is stable or not. Take for example the skge net driver. It's "perfect" on some systems, and utterly busted on others. How would you express that in Kconfig ? Dave -- http://www.codemonkey.org.uk - 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/