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Linus Pooh-Pooh's Real-Time Patch

Posted by timothy on from the standoffish dept.

An anonymous reader submits "Speaking with CNet via email, Linus Torvalds appears to be in no hurry to accept the latest real-time patches from embedded specialist MontaVista into the mainstream kernel, at least not "at this time." Nontheless, MontaVista's new open-source real-time Linux project could broadly expand commercial opportunities for the open source OS, especially in telecom initially, where real-time Linux will likely play on "both ends of the wire." For example, Linux is already making progress in smartphones."

4 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. Better link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Direct link to they story.

  2. Re:Patents ? by d_jedi · · Score: 5, Informative

    RTFA.

    A hard realtime operating system is one where calls to the operating system are guaranteed to be executed within a certain timeframe.

    --
    I am the maverick of Slashdot
  3. Re:Might not be in a hurry.... by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 5, Informative
    He might not be in a hurry, but I'd be surprised if he doesn't realize how this could help Linux.

    I'd be shocked if he didn't realize exactly how this patch would impact Linux. From the article:
    "Almost nobody wants hard real-time, even in embedded devices," Torvalds said in an e-mail interview. Adding the feature makes the operating system more complex and burdens the process of "locking," in which the operating system assures that different processes don't step on each others' toes when vying for the same resources.

    Asked whether MontaVista's proposed software could be accepted into the main kernel, he said, "I personally think it's too intrusive, at least at this point," though it might be possible to merge the patch into the kernel in smaller pieces.
    Iduno what else there is to discuss...
    --

    There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
  4. Re:It is the scope and magnitude of the patch by bfields · · Score: 5, Informative
    Historically, Linus has never liked merging in great glops of code that touch the kernel in many places. It is disruptive to his maintenance of the kernel and it is disruptive to his lieutenants and their sub projects. The article even hinted at how Linus expects those with a major patch like this to handle things. Montavista needs to break this up into bite size chunks that can be slowly merged into the kernel and gives everybody time to get up to speed.

    Note also that the patch hasn't really even been submitted for inclusion. The Montavista people posted it to LKML with a lot of warnings, making it clear this was intended as a way to get early feedback on the direction of their project, rather than as an example of a finished implementation.

    So the slashdot headline is more than a little misleading; everybody agrees this is early in the process, and it's no suprise no-one's rushing to apply the patch.

    --Bruce Fields