Re: [GIT PULL] Namespace file descriptors for 2.6.40

From: Ingo Molnar
Date: Sun May 22 2011 - 04:42:54 EST



* James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Traditionally, the arch trees tend to go a bit later because they wait to see
> if there's any fallout from x86; [...]

Not really - most of the arch trees 'traditionally' went late even when the x86
tree itself was monolithic and was itself sent late in the merge window (with
the notable exception of the powerpc tree).

> [...] but this time, I think it looks OK, [...]

That's not really a surprise, there hasn't been a serious 'problem' with the
x86 tree for a long time, roughly since we switched to the finegrained Git
topical split-up maintenance model about two years ago.

[ That split-up also means that there is no 'x86 tree' anymore as such: if you
check lkml we send roughly 20-30 independent trees in the merge window and
have done that for the past ~10 kernel cycles. ]

In fact exactly *because* there's few problems with the x86 topic trees can we
push them so soon: if problems were frequent then 1) we would not be able to be
ready on time and 2) i suspect we'd be pulled in later in the window as well as
a maintainer generally wants to pull low risk items first, high risk items
last, to maximize the utilization of testing capacity.

I agree with Linus's notion in this thread though, a core kernel change should
generally not worry about hooking up rare-arch system calls (concentrate on the
architectures that get tested most) - those are better enabled gradually
anyway.

Also, system call table conflicts are trivial to resolve. Merging in net-next
to avoid such a conflict is like cracking a nut with a sledgehammer.

Thanks,

Ingo
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