<rant#2>
Actually his rant is more than valid. He can cope with the problems,
others as well, but in stable kernel? All other important free software
projects get some testing before release, with linux testing is almost nil.
Yes, linus only uses an x86, but then he should admit that he releases
kernels for x86 only and nothing else.
This is not a problem with Linus or Linux. Linus shouldn't do _anything_ to
ensure linux is compiling on architecture xy. But whats hampering the
professional apperance of linux a lot is that kernel are just broken.
The solution? Linus should consider giving away some of the work. For example
consider what happens with any (any!) new perl module that is uploaded to the
CPAN (the standard archivefor such modules)? Some member of a group named
"cpan testers" just download and try to compile it. Nothing more. If they are
cool, they might even diagnose and fix bugs for you, but this is not
important.
The result? Most bugs are getting fixed very quickly. The same is done
much more thoroughly with releases.
I think something like this should be possible in the linux community,
given that the linux kernel has far less portability problems than a perl
module (yet fails to compile for childish reasons more often than the
average perl module).
Really, stable kernels that do not compile are a joke. A bad joke. The
same is true for "feature freezed" kernels that somehow got totally new
(and broken) functionality. Either make it feature freeze or not (yes,
stable kernels that crash within minutes are not nice).
The current situation just looks like this: "yes, x86 is fine, everything
else is luck". Very professional.
</>
> Okay, I'll agree that some sort of ChangeLog like that wouldn't be a
> horrible thing to have. But, the question gets into what changes need to
> be documented there? And that's a whole other barrel of questions.
IMHO the concept of "ChangeLog" is quite explored. Linux wouldn'tbe the first
projetc to use one.
Plus, if people always added a standard ChangeLog entry to their patches
this could remove the burden from Linus even more.
--
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---==---(_)__ __ ____ __ Marc Lehmann +--
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The choice of a GNU generation |
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