RE: The direction linux is taking

[Rik van Riel]

On Thu, 27 Dec 2001, Dana Lacoste wrote:

> > >Not really. We do a passable job. Stuff gets dropped, lost,
> > >deferred and forgotten, applied when it conflicts with other work
> > >- much of this stuff that software wouldnt actually improve on over a
> > >person

> Q - Would CVS or Perforce or BitKeeper help fix these problems?
> A - No, the problem is one of organization, not accountability
>
> Maybe we should toss the original question and try to find ways
> to solve the organizational problems instead?

Sounds like an idea, except that up to now I haven't seen
any suitable solution for this.

The biggest problem right now seems to be that of patches
being dropped, which is a direct result of the kernel
maintainers not having infinite time.

A system to solve this problem would have to make it easier
for the kernel maintainers to remember patches, while at the
same time saving them time. I guess it would have something
like the following ingredients:
1. remember the patches and their descriptions
2. have the possibility for other people (subsystem maintainers?)
   to de-queue or update pending patches
3. check at each pre-release if the patches still apply, notify
   the submitter if the patch no longer applies
4. make an easy "one-click" solution for the maintainers to apply
   the patch and add a line to the changelog ;)
   (all patches apply without rejects, patches which don't apply
   have already been bounced back to the maintainer by #3)
5. after a new pre-patch, send the kernel maintainer a quick
   overview of pending patches
6. patches can get different priorities assigned, so the kernel
   maintainers can spend their time with the highest-priority
   patches first
7. .. ?

All in all, if such a system is ever going to exist, it
needs to _reduce_ the amount of work the kernel maintainers
need to do, otherwise it'll never get used.

regards,

Rik
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