Re: How to improve the quality of the kernel?
- From: Adrian Bunk <bunk@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 21:31:10 +0200
On Sun, Jun 17, 2007 at 07:31:01PM +0200, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
On Sunday, 17 June 2007 16:29, Adrian Bunk wrote:
On Sun, Jun 17, 2007 at 03:17:58PM +0200, Michal Piotrowski wrote:
On 17/06/07, Adrian Bunk <bunk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
...
Fine with me, but:
There are not so simple cases like big infrastructure patches with
20 other patches in the tree depending on it causing a regression, or
even worse, a big infrastructure patch exposing a latent old bug in some
completely different area of the kernel.
It is different case.
"If the patch introduces a new regression"
introduces != exposes an old bug
My remark was meant as a note "this sentence can't handle all
regressions" (and for a user it doesn't matter whether a new
regression is introduced or an old regression exposed).
It could be we simply agree on this one. ;-)
Removal of 20 patches will be painful, but sometimes you need to
"choose minor evil to prevent a greater one" [1].
And we should be aware that reverting is only a workaround for the real...
problem which lies in our bug handling.
And this is something I want to emphasize again.
How can we make any progress with the real problem and not only the
symptoms?
I think that we can handle bug reports like we handle modifications of code.
Namely, for each subsystem there can be a person (or a team) responsible
for handling bugs, by which I don't mean fixing them, but directing bug reports
at the right developers or subsystem maintainers, following the history of each
bug report etc. [Of course, these people can choose to use the bugzilla or any
other bug tracking system they want, as long as it works for them.]
The email addresses of these people should be known (and even documented),
so that everyone can notify them if need be and so that it's clear who should
handle given bug reports.
Currently, these people are "Andrew Morton" and the addresses are
linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx and http://bugzilla.kernel.org/ - and this
part is working.
Although there is room for improvement in this area, the problem in the
pipeline is really to find developers who know the code in question and
who are willing to debug bug reports.
There are unmaintained parts of the kernel.
And there are parts of the kernel where the maintainers are developing
code, reviewing code and handling patches but are not willing or simply
not capable of looking at bug reports. That's not against these people
and they might do great work, but then there's simply an additional
person missing who would be willing to learn the subsystem in question
and handle bug reports.
All bug handling becomes moot and every request for more information
from the submitter a waste of time if there's noone available for
looking deeper into a bug.
Just an idea. :-)
Greetings,
Rafael
cu
Adrian
--
"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
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- References:
- Re: [PATCH] (Re: regression tracking (Re: Linux 2.6.21))
- From: Michal Piotrowski
- How to improve the quality of the kernel?
- From: Adrian Bunk
- Re: How to improve the quality of the kernel?
- From: Rafael J. Wysocki
- Re: [PATCH] (Re: regression tracking (Re: Linux 2.6.21))
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