Re: Linux 2.6.16.30-pre1

On Sat, Sep 23, 2006 at 10:49:09PM +0200, Jean Delvare wrote:

Hi Adrian, Greg,

Hi Jean,

I second Greg's objection, and share his worries. "No possible
regression" is something extremely hard to evaluate in general.
Besides, the goal of -stable as I remember it is not "no regression"
but rather "only bugfixes", i.e. patches don't go in without a good
reason (default policy = reject), rather than patches are rejected if
they may cause problem (default policy = accept.)

Adding support for new devices, even if it's only adding an ID in a
list, is not always safe. I am not happy about new IDs being considered
as OK for late RCs, I am even less so for -stable.

the main goals for 2.6.16 are:
- no regressions
- security fixes

And I did always say that things like adding new PCI IDs are considered
OK for 2.6.16.

The sole fact that Adrian felt the need to release a -pre1 for
2.6.16.30 betrays his lack of confidence IMHO.

No, all it says is:
- there was no reason for releasing 2.6.16.30 very soon
- my TODO list still contains reviewing 65 of the patches the -stable
team added to 2.6.17

And the size of ChangeLog-2.6.16.29 speaks for itself.

Except for 2 bug fixes, all of them were patches the -stable team added
to 2.6.17.

Given that 2.6.16.y follows the naming convention of -stable and is
released in the official v2.6 directory on ftp.kernel.org, I'd like to
see it follow the same rules we have for "real" -stable trees. Adrian,
if you are going to diverge from the original intent of -stable, this
is your own right, but then please change the name of your tree to
2.6.16-ab or something similar, to clear the confusion.

I will not use 2.6.16.y with its current rules, for sure, and I doubt
any distribution will. Wasn't the whole point of 2.6.16.y to serve as a
common base between several distributions?

No, see [1]:

<-- snip -->

Q:
What is the target audience for this 2.6.16 series?

A:
The target audience are users still using 2.4 (or who'd still use kernel
2.4 if they weren't forced to upgrade to 2.6 for some reason) who want a
stable kernel series including security fixes but excluding many
regressions.
It might also be interesting for distributions that prefer stability
over always using the latest stuff.

<-- snip -->


The 2.6.16 series is an offer.

If you don't want to use it it's OK.

Distributions can use it, cherry pick from it, or ignore it.

Whether a distribution uses 2.6.16 or a more recent kernel (that will
anyway support more hardware than 2.6.16 ever will), and if a
distribution that uses 2.6.16 will ever follow the 2.6.16 series depends
on the goals of the distribution.


Thanks,
Jean Delvare

cu
Adrian

[1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/354360

--

"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

-
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/

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Rich Ulrich continues his statistical Muddle, Quackery, and MALPRACTICE
    ... A discrete uniform distribution of ranks. ... >> the distribution of the X used in any multiple regression. ... >> RU> Normality is only one sort ... decided to do a fitting of a particular Y on several X that had already ...
    (sci.stat.math)
  • Re: RSS Clash of the Ex-Players - Groups
    ... distribution of Lazio's goals? ... What's Fiorentina's goal distribution? ... Sukur Suckers: Shift to 4-5-1 (let's at least try to get Sukur to advance in ... Emerson will return to the line-up. ...
    (rec.sport.soccer)
  • Re: Rich Ulrich continues his statistical Muddle, Quackery, and MALPRACTICE
    ... >>> muddle about the standard regression assumptions, ... A discrete uniform distribution of ranks. ... why was sehwail and Richard Ulrich want to check the "normality" ...
    (sci.stat.math)
  • Re: Fedora vs RedHat
    ... the mistaken impression that Fedora is supposed to be a stable, ... mainstream desktop distribution? ... that maybe that is because the goals of the Fedora community are not ...
    (Fedora)
  • Re: statistics::linear-model question
    ... (extrapolation), the regression line give you an estimate of Y. I know ... reasonable to experiment with a least-square regression as already ... Very mild assumptions on the distribution of ... sure the new Y will be in *this* range" that those bound intervals ...
    (comp.lang.tcl)