Re: [PATCH 04/40] staging/lustre/llite: Access to released file trigs a restore

[Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 02:07:02PM +0800, Peng Tao wrote:
> >> > So, why would I believe that you all are really going to start doing the
> >> > major cleanup work on this code that is so obviously needed?  Why would
> >> > I take new features that you are spending your time on instead?
> >> >
> >> My apologize. I was distracted by other projects for some time and I
> >> am trying to make it up. I thought you agreed that I can first close
> >> the patch gap between in-kernel client and external tree, and then add
> >> cleanup patches, no?
> >
> > What exactly is "the gap"?  Are we talking 200 patches?  10?  100?  I
> > have no idea what you are referring to, but realize I can't review 100
> > patches at a single time easily.
> >
> Right now, I think it is about 150 patches. I will split them into
> smaller chunks (10 patches or in each patchset) and send them
> incrementally.

Good.

> > And what happens when I accep these "gap" patches?  Will development in
> > this external tree suddenly stop?  It sure doesn't seem like this is
> > happening as I thought it would have already since the code has been in
> > the kernel for over 6 months now.
> >
> No, it won't stop. The biggest feature coming in this time is HSM. In
> future, I think there will be less features and more bug fixes.
> Porting patches from external tree isn't just to make the two tree in
> sync. External tree contains many bug fix patches that in kernel
> client wants as well. If we stop porting, as time goes by, the in tree
> client will be less featured, and more buggy than external tree. When
> we get it out of staging like that, it will be very hard to persuade
> people to use it.

So, who is going to take the time to do the cleanup and work involved in
getting this into mergable state, if developers are off adding new
features to your out-of-tree kernel code?

I _really_ hate taking new features for staging drivers, as that shows
that the developers are using staging as just a dumping ground to get
stuff merged, without taking the time to get it cleaned up properly.

If this continues, and no major work is done to clean things up within
the next 6 months (i.e. the same thing as the past 6 months.) this code
will be deleted from the tree.  You have been warned.

> > You already have 2 different code bases :(
> we still want to make the difference as small as possible. So it won't
> cost too much effort to port patches between them.

That is your problem, not ours, sorry.

Best of luck,

greg k-h