Re: Reducing the pressure

Helge Hafting (helge.hafting@daldata.no)
Wed, 30 Sep 1998 09:04:51 +0100


In <19980930020757.A21649@thyrsus.com>, on 09/30/98
at 02:07 AM, "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> said:

>Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>:
>> However, I'll also take a few days off. Quite frankly, I just got very fed
>> up with a lot of people. David, when I come back, I expect a public
>> apology from you. Others, look yourself in the mirror, and ask yourself
>> whether you feel confident that you could do a better job maintaining
>> this. If you can, get back to me, and maybe we can work something out.

>People, these are the early-warning signs of potential burnout. Heed
>them and take warning. Linus's stamina has been astonishing, but it's
>not limitless. All of us (and yes, that means you too, Linus) need to
>cooperate to *reduce* the pressure on the critical man in the middle,
>rather than increasing it.

If the workload is too much for Linus then it may be time
for delegating work. Maybe someone could "pre-process"
patches, rejecting those that doesn't meet the quality standards mentioned
below. Various other simple checks could be made too, such as testing
that the patches apply and compile. This last step can be done
automatically.

Sending a rejection reply would be possible too, letting
the develolper improve the work immediately instead of waiting for the
next version.

Helge Hafting

>From the developers, that means a couple of things:

>(a) Make your patches small. One functional change per patch. Explain
> the change along with the patch. Include explanatory comments in
> the patch. Include a description of *how you tested it*. "This
> works" is not good enough, not by a long country light-year.

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