Re: Elaboration on "Equivalent fix must already exist in Linus' tree"

[Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>]

Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 11:42 PM,  <david@lang.hm> wrote:
>> - Show quoted text -
>> On Mon, 2 Mar 2009, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
>>> OK small silly example is convincing distributions it may be a good
>>> idea to carry linux-next kernel packages as options to users to
>>> hopefully down the road reduce the delta between what they carry and
>>> what is actually upstream.
>>
>> linux-next is a testing tree for developers, it changes day to day, doesn't
>> contain all relavent changes, and is definantly _not_ something that distros
>> should be pushing to users.
> 
> Why not? Just as people may want to get bleeding edge wireless I don't
> see why a user may not want to simply get bleeding edge wireless and
> bleeding edge audio, and video.

They want wireless to work and audio to not break.

> The latest RC series helps but lets
> face it there are also a lot of good stuff queued for the -next
> releases as well. The way I'm seeing this is if a user has no support
> for a device on their system it should look something like this:
> 
> Distribution kernel -->
>   Distribution next stable kernel release (2.6.27 --> 2.6.28) -->
>     Distribution RC kernel (if one is available) | kernel.org RC kernel -->
>       Development tree kernel for a specific device -->
>         Staging
> 
> If the have multiple devices which are not yet supported by the latest
> RC kernel but on -next then you have little options but I think a
> concrete one should exist and it does.

Testers for linux-next are certainly welcome, but these testers need to
understand what the actual topic of linux-next is.

It is an integration-testing tree (for what is anticipated to be part of
Linus' next merge window).  Integration testing is for the purpose of
detecting + fixing (or avoiding) problems due to interactions between
subsystems, or between infrastructure code to peripheral code.

Therefore I agree with David that linux-next is somewhat too special for
general consumption.

Before integration testing, we test subsystem developments in a more
targeted fashion in our myriad of subsystem development trees.  (These
trees host special branches from which linux-next is created almost
daily in a more or less automated fashion.)

Of course if a distributor wanted to package linux-next, why not.  The
nature of -next would call for several of such package releases per week
though.
-- 
Stefan Richter
-=====-==--= --== ---==
http://arcgraph.de/sr/