Re: Linux 2.6.21

From: Jeff Garzik
Date: Thu Apr 26 2007 - 14:05:53 EST


IMO, the closer you look, the more warts you find. Before you starting doing your work with kernel regressions, no one was really tracking it. I bet you have helped cut down on the regressions, but I have no good way to quantify my gut feeling.

Additional comments on developers and fixing regressions:

* Sometimes seeing a long list, peoples' eyes glaze over. Its just human nature. A long list also gives us no idea of scale, or severity. I bet a weekly "top 10 bugs and regressions" email would help focus developer attention.

* To be effective, lists, either long or top-10, must be pruned if you get a sense that only one user is affected. [With oopses and BUGs as a clear exception,] many problems benefit from at least two users reporting a bug.

* It gets a bit tiresome to field the large number of driver bug reports that eventually turn out to be related to broken interrupt handling somehow. I think we developers need to get better at showing users how to isolate driver vs. PCI/ACPI/core bugs. Maybe drivers need to start introducing interrupt delivery tests into their probe code. Overall, broken interrupt handling manifests in several ways, most of which initially appear symptomatic of a broken driver.

Jeff


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