Re: starting with 2.7

[Gene Heskett <gene.heskett@verizon.net>]

On Tuesday 04 January 2005 16:43, Willy Tarreau wrote:
>On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 04:19:10PM -0500, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
>> The problem with the -rc releases is that we try to predict in
>> advance which releases in advance will be stable, and we don't
>> seem to be able to do a good job of that.
>
>I really like this description, it's the most accurate description I
> ever read of an -rc release. I wish you could convince Linus with
> it.
>
>The problem with -rc is that if we try to predict, it implies that
> we don't expect to count much on user reports. Then why do an -rc
> at all if we don't expect enough testings ?
>
>> If we do a release every week, my guess is
>> that at least 1 in 3 releases will turn out to be stable enough
>> for most purposes.  But we won't know until after 2 or 3 days
>> which releases will be the good ones.

Thats what gets me, when approaching a point release, the -rc's come 
at almost daily intervals.  Granted, if  huge bug that really hurts 
shows up in -rc1, then -rc2 should follow as soon as *that* bug can 
be addressed.  Then maybe in 3 days, something else shows up as a 
trend in the reports, go fix that and have -rc3 after say 5 days.  
Then sit and watch the folks like me, who usually do build the -rc 
stuff just so I can attempt to do my part in heading off the 2.6.8 
fiasco.  -rc(x) should have a lifetime of no less than a week of the 
rest of us beating on it before it gets its name changed to 2.6.xx.

IMO, some of the stuff has moved to final in the last days with 
nowhere near enough time for this old fart to beat on it.  The recent 
string of realtime stuff from Ingo ran very well indeed here, with 
one glaring exception that seemed to vary from reboot to reboot to 
exactly the same kernel, something was happening that destroyed the 
amanda client amandad, several days in a row.  OTOH, after running 
flawlessly wth 33-04 for a week, the next and subsequent reboots to 
that kernel will now fail amanda 100% of the time.  Now I'm using 
-ac2, but -ac1, for the limited time I ran it, worked very well too.

But that doesn't mean I will not continue to build the -mm1-***.34-* 
series for testing also, because I will, if only to be able to report 
that so and so is broken.

Basicly, if we who don't mind bleeding occasionally, don't have at 
least 48 hours to beat on a test kernel from the time we get around 
to building it, then there are going to be gotcha's that get by this 
testing and into the linus mainline.  This does not portend well for 
progress in general, and like Dave Jones said, leads to lots of 
name-of-distro-specific patches.  There should be an announced 
feature freeze at least 15 days ahead of a release, with nothing but 
bigfixes allowed in from that point, and the actual release made when 
its satisfactorially stable for everybody.  I'd suggest not less than 
7 days of most of us running it in the real world as an example of 
stable, with the only bug reports being generated by us laid at 
hardwares feet during that time.  Not a hell of a lot you can do 
about randomly bum hardware.

>That's always been my point, and one of the reasons why *some* of
> Alan's kernels work well.
>
>> In practice, that's all the -rc releases are these days anyway
>> (there are times when a 2.6.x-rcy release is more stable than
>> 2.6.z).  The problem is that since the -rc releases are called
>> what they are called, they don't get enough testing.
>
>Perfectly true. I would add that with -rc releases, people only
> upgrade when we tell them that they can, while with more frequent
> releases, they upgrade when they *need* to, and can try several
> versions if the first one they pick does not work.
>
>Regards,
>Willy
>
I disagree Willy, if I see an -rc candidate, even if I'm following an 
interesting thread, like Ingo's patches, the rc will get built and 
run here, precisely so I can bitch if it doesn't work.  I have an 
idea there are more like me who are interested as much in whats *new* 
as in how well does it run *my* stuff, and that you may possibly be 
undercounting us...

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
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