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

Bus

[kevin_conaway]

What if he gets hit by a bus? What would happen then?

Is there a hierarchy of maintainers (like the succession to President) or what?

Seems to me they should have at least 2 people at that spot so its not completely a single point of failure.

Re:Bus

[Pieroxy]

As far as my experience has shown me, there is no 'single point of failure' in any team made of humans. Some things would be lost for sure, but life (of the project) would just go on.

Of course, as everything in life, it is not black and white. He would have to be replaced (or the devel structure shifted) and changes would result from this. But the whole thing would not just stop.

Start adding unit tests

[Anonymous Coward]

Add a requirement that each bug should have a failing unit test, that fails before the patch is applied and succeeds after the patch is applied.

it's an architectural problem

[idlake]

This is an architectural problem, not a resource problem. There is no reason why the Linux kernel should require the baroque system of manual patches and updates that is currently in place. Instead, it should be composable at runtime out of many modules that are encapsulated enough and insulated enough from one another to be developed and updated independently.

Re:it's an architectural problem

[mrchaotica]

I think the kernel you're looking for is HURD. ; )

Re:Test?

[brunson]

It sounds like they could benefit from a practice in Xtreme Programming. The test cases should be written before the patch is written and submitted with the patch. The test cases would then go into a regression framework and the regression test must be passed before a release.

Re:Test?

[laptop006]

Show me how to write usable test cases for hundreds of peices of random hardware.

That which can be tested already is (The big one I can think of is filesystem stability).

You should at least read kernel traffic to see how much attention some of this code gets, and personally, I'm amazed at how few bugs are left, and how many of those are just badly designed hardware.