Re: starting with 2.7

From: Felipe Alfaro Solana
Date: Wed Jan 05 2005 - 16:22:56 EST


On 5 Jan 2005, at 14:31, Helge Hafting wrote:

Felipe Alfaro Solana wrote:


I don't pretend that kernel interfaces stay written in stone, for ages. What I would like is that, at least, those interfaces were stable enough, let's say for a few months for a stable kernel series, so I don't have to keep bothering my propietary VMWare vendor to fix the problems for me, since the new kernel interface broke VMWare. Yeah, I know I could decide not to upgrade kernels in last instance, but that's not always possible.

You should definitely bother your proprietary vendor all the time, they will then
see more clearly that they have to act fast _if_ they want to stay proprietary.

I do bother them, but they try at its best to fix things, and they do. They are propietary, and neither me nor anyone can force them to change their minds.

If kernel interfaces need to be changed for whatever reason, change them in 2.7, -mm, -ac or whatever tree first, and let the community know beforehand what those changes will be, and be prepared to adapt. Meanwhile, try to leave 2.6 as stable as possible.

Do you follow -mm, -ac, and friends closely? Most changes do happen in -mm first.
So you have time, all the way up to the next release. Use that time to bug your
vendor about the imminent change. There seems to be weeks between releases
now, plenty of time for a vendor to stay up-to-date.

I try to follow -mm releases closely, but as someone said, the ChangeLog is extremely dense for me to try to understand what's going on deeply.

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