Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758154AbZFBRyg (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Jun 2009 13:54:36 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1755475AbZFBRy3 (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Jun 2009 13:54:29 -0400 Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:41205 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753916AbZFBRy2 (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Jun 2009 13:54:28 -0400 Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 10:46:05 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds X-X-Sender: torvalds@localhost.localdomain To: George Dunlap cc: Thomas Gleixner , David Miller , "jeremy@goop.org" , "mingo@elte.hu" , Dan Magenheimer , "avi@redhat.com" , "xen-devel@lists.xensource.com" , "x86@kernel.org" , "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" , Keir Fraser , "gregkh@suse.de" , "kurt.hackel@oracle.com" , Ian Pratt , "xen-users@lists.xensource.com" , ksrinivasan , "EAnderson@novell.com" , "wimcoekaerts@wimmekes.net" , Stephen Spector , "jens.axboe@oracle.com" , "npiggin@suse.de" Subject: Re: Xen is a feature In-Reply-To: <4A25564A.70608@eu.citrix.com> Message-ID: References: <162f4c90-6431-4a2a-b337-6d7451d7b11e@default> <20090528001350.GD26820@elte.hu> <4A1F302E.8030501@goop.org> <20090528.210559.137121893.davem@davemloft.net> <4A1FCE8E.2060604@eu.citrix.com> <4A25564A.70608@eu.citrix.com> User-Agent: Alpine 2.01 (LFD 1184 2008-12-16) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2271 Lines: 52 On Tue, 2 Jun 2009, George Dunlap wrote: > > idea that changes shouldn't introduce performance regressions. But there are > patchqueues that are ready, signed-off by other maintainers, and which Ingo > admits that he has no technical objections to, but refuses to merge. I've seen technical objects in this thread. The whole thing _started_ with one, and Thomas brought up others. As a top-level maintainer, I can also very much sympathise with the "don't merge new stuff if there are known problems and no known solutions to those issues". Is Ingo supposed to just continue to merge crap, when it's admitted that it has problems and pollutes code that he has to maintain? The fact is (and this is a _fact_): Xen is a total mess from a development standpoint. I talked about this in private with Jeremy. Xen pollutes the architecture code in ways that NO OTHER subsystem does. And I have never EVER seen the Xen developers really acknowledge that and try to fix it. Thomas pointed to patches that add _explicitly_ Xen-related special cases that aren't even trying to make sense. See the local apic thing. So quite frankly, I wish some of the Xen people looked themselves in the mirror, and then asked themselves "would _I_ merge something ugly like that, if it was filling my subsystem with totally unrelated hacks for some other crap"? Seriously. If it was just the local APIC, fine. But it may be just the local APIC code this time around, next time it will be something else. It's been TLB, it's been entry_*.S, it's been all over. Some of them are performance issues. I dunno. I just do know that I pointed out the statistics for how mindlessly incestuous the Xen patches have historically been to Jeremy. He admitted it. I've not seen _anybody_ say that things will improve. Xen has been painful. If you give maintainers pain, don't expect them to love you or respect you. So I would really suggest that Xen people should look at _why_ they are giving maintainers so much pain. Linus -- 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/