Re: x86 status was Re: -mm merge plans for 2.6.23

From: Linus Torvalds
Date: Wed Jul 11 2007 - 17:43:58 EST




On Wed, 11 Jul 2007, Ingo Molnar wrote:
>
> What you just did here is a slap in the face to a lot of contributors
> who worked hard on this code :(

Ingo, I'm sorry to say so, but your answer just convinced me that you're
wrong, and we MUST NOT take that code.

That was *exactly* the same thing you talked about when I refused to take
the original timer changes into 2.6.20. You were talking about how lots of
people had worked really hard, and how it was really tested.

And it damn well was NOT really tested, and 2.6.21 ended up being a
horribly painful experience (one of the more painful kernel releases in
recent times), and we ended up havign to fix a *lot* of stuff.

And you admitted you were wrong at the time.

Now you do the *exact* same thing.

Here's a big clue: it doesn't matter one _whit_ how much face-slapping you
get, or how much effort some programmers have put into the code. It's
untested. And no, we are *not* going to do another "rip everything out,
and replace it with new code" again.

Over my dead body.

We're going to do this thing gradually, or not at all.

And if somebody feels slighted by the face-slap, and thinks he has already
done enough, and isn't interested in doing it gradually, then good
riddance. The "not at all" seems like a good idea, and maybe we can
re-visit this in a year or two.

I'm not going to have another 2.6.21 on my hands.

Linus
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/