To: "Giacomo A. Catenazzi" <cate@cateee.net>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
       Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Linux 2.6.24
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:10:11 +0100."
             <4799A773.2030702@cateee.net>
From: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu
References: <alpine.LFD.1.00.0801241506500.15329@hp.linux-foundation.org> <alpine.LFD.1.00.0801241529440.15329@hp.linux-foundation.org>
            <4799A773.2030702@cateee.net>
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Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 04:58:13 -0500
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On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:10:11 +0100, "Giacomo A. Catenazzi" said:

> As a tester I would like:
> - slow merges, so that developer could rebase and test
>    (compile test) the interaction of the new code.

An amazing amount of stuff gets caught when it's tested in Andrew Morton's -mm
tree.  You think -rc1's are bad now, consider that much of what will be
25-rc1 already got tried as 24-rc6-mm1 and 24-rc8-mm1.  Without those, the
-rc1 releases would be truly horrific.. ;)

> - you will introduce a new step on git management:
>    Every changeset is compile-tested before going out to the world.
>    I think this can be done automatically, and I think that one or
>    two configurations are enough to find most of the problems.

It's true that a compile on x86 and a compile on PowerPC should flush out
most of the truly stupid mistakes, but those are usually found and fixed
literally within hours.  Anyhow, the proper time for test compiles is *before*
it goes into the git trees at all - it should have been tested before it
gets sent to a maintainer for inclusion.

Plus, there's a *lot* of issues that "one or two configurations" won't
find - we continually find build issues that literally depend on 3 or 4
different CONFIG_* settings, and only misbehave for one specific combination.
And all the things that compile clean but explode at runtime.


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