Torvalds & Linux Dev Process

sebFlyte writes "Builder UK is reporting that Linus Torvalds is concerned that the Linux production kernel maintainence process might be overly taxing Andrew Morton, saying: "One issue is that I actually worry that Andrew will at some point be where I was a couple of years ago -- overworked and stressed out by just tons and tons of patches. If Andrew burns out, we'll all suffer hugely." Morton himself wants to make -mm releases more often. He sees bugs as more of a problem, rather than patches themselves. His solution is simple: "I'd like to release -mm's more often and I'd like -mm to have less of a wild-and-crappy reputation. Both of these would happen if originators were to test their stuff more carefully.""

Comments

already there

[diegocgteleline.es]

Linux Kernel Gets Fully Automated Test

2.6 stabilization project (helped a lot during 2.5.x develpment AFAIK)

http://www.osdl.org/docs/stabilization_plan.curren t

Some already exists.

[jd]

The Linux Test Project, Web100 (which profiles the network stack) and the TAHI IPv6/IPSec Test Suite should be usable to give you a starting point for validating the kernel. HOL may be usable as a component in formal proofs of components with well-defined behaviour (such as busses, networks, etc). Both TAU and the Performance Application Programming Interface would allow you to create profiles of kernel components running in User-Mode Linux, so allowing developers to spot the causes of things like latency.

These wouldn't solve ALL problems, or even the majority of them, but they would solve some and they would make life easier on developers in the long-run. Are these being used? Well, a glance at the Freshmeat graphs for Web100 shows that it is getting downloaded. This doesn't mean it is getting used, though. The same is true of virtually all of the other code I've mentioned. People have copies, but if the code being submitted is flakey and taking a long time to fix, then maybe the code is not being used as much as it could/should be.

The tools exist, the tools exist on people's hard drives, but unless the tools are being used in practice, that's not going to do any good.