[Ksummit-2013-discuss] When to push bug fixes to mainline

[John W. Linville]

On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 08:50:23PM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote:

> In any case, I've been very conservative in _not_ pushing bug fixes to
> Linus after -rc3 (unless they are fixing a regression or the bug fix
> is super-serious); I'd much rather have them cook in the ext4 tree
> where they can get a lot more testing (a full regression test run for
> ext4 takes over 24 hours), and for people trying out linux-next.
> 
> Maybe the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of holding back
> changes and trying to avoid the risk of introducing regressions;
> perhaps this would be a good topic to discuss at the Kernel Summit.

Yes, there does seem to be a certain ebb and flow as to how strict
the rules are about what should go into stable, what fixes are "good
enough" for a given -rc, how tight those rule are in -rc2 vs in -rc6,
etc.  If nothing else, a good repetitive flogging and a restatement of
the One True Way to handle these things might be worthwhile once again...

John
-- 
John W. Linville		Someday the world will need a hero, and you
linville at tuxdriver.com			might be all we have.  Be ready.