[Ksummit-2013-discuss] [ATTEND] initrd, staging tree, and multi-tree management

[Greg KH]

On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 01:04:49PM +0200, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to attend this year's kernel summit.
> 
> * A topic that came to my mind is about initrd.  Although initrd is a
> pretty fundamental thing for kernel, we don't touch this development
> directly at all.  As a result, there are way different
> implementations.  For distro POV, a unified "official" tool would make
> a lot of sense. 
> 
> I remember Dave Jones once proposed it years back, and I'll try to
> whip a dead horse, as the situation hasn't changed at all since then.

Isn't dracut the answer here?  I thought just about all distros, except
SuSE, were now using it?

> * Another topic is about staging tree.  The staging tree is surely a
> good move, but the development of drivers in staging tree looks far
> from ideal, unfortunately.  It seems to me that it's not clear whether
> many staging drivers are intended to be merged to the main subsystem
> or just been there. 
> And, in many cases, the drivers submitted to the staging tree got
> rotten while the vendor continues the development of out-of-tree
> driver.

I was not aware of drivers that were in staging while the vendor
developed an out-of-tree version, do you have any specific examples?
I'll gladly just drop the in-tree version because of this.

And yes, some drivers have gotten "stale" in staging, a bunch are now
marked to be deleted so 3.11 and 3.12 should look a lot better in that
area thanks to the help of the summer intern we now have working on the
staging tree.

thanks,

greg k-h