From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751136AbWGXPiy (ORCPT ); Mon, 24 Jul 2006 11:38:54 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751164AbWGXPiy (ORCPT ); Mon, 24 Jul 2006 11:38:54 -0400 Received: from dspnet.fr.eu.org ([213.186.44.138]:49164 "EHLO dspnet.fr.eu.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751136AbWGXPiy (ORCPT ); Mon, 24 Jul 2006 11:38:54 -0400 Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 17:38:53 +0200 From: Olivier Galibert To: Theodore Tso , Linux Kernel Mailing List , Nikita Danilov , Steve Lord Subject: Re: the " 'official' point of view" expressed by kernelnewbies.org regarding reiser4 inclusion Message-ID: <20060724153853.GA88678@dspnet.fr.eu.org> Mail-Followup-To: Olivier Galibert , Theodore Tso , Linux Kernel Mailing List , Nikita Danilov , Steve Lord References: <44C12F0A.1010008@namesys.com> <20060722130219.GB7321@thunk.org> <44C42B92.40507@xfs.org> <17604.31844.765717.375423@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <20060724103023.GA7615@thunk.org> <20060724113534.GA64920@dspnet.fr.eu.org> <20060724133939.GA11353@thunk.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20060724133939.GA11353@thunk.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Mon, Jul 24, 2006 at 09:39:39AM -0400, Theodore Tso wrote: > On Mon, Jul 24, 2006 at 01:35:34PM +0200, Olivier Galibert wrote: > >Ext patches don't get reviewed much > > outside of the developpers, and they go in pretty much without > > discussion in any case, except when Linus blows a fuse. > > Um, you're kidding, right? We certainly don't make the assumption > that we can violate CodingStyle willy nilly and stuff in yacc grammers > into ext3 and assume that no one will push back. I'm not kidding. I do recognise that the ext* maintainers do a very good and clean job. > In fact we did a lot of work to make sure the patches were clean and > mostly ready to be accepted to mainline even before we made the first > proposal to push extents to LKML. I'm no talking about extends only. Ext3 now is very, very different than the ext2+journal it was at the start, with backwards-incompatible format changes added all the time[1]. These changes went in no-questions-asked. > > I think there is something of a problem currently, tough. It is > > getting too hard to get code in if you're not a maintainer for an > > existing subsystem (reiser4, suspend2...), and too easy when you're a > > maintainer (ext4, uswsusp...). > > It's not fair to assume that the only reason why non-maintainers have > a harder time getting changes is because their changes are getting > more intensive review. "only", no, definitively not. The impact is non-negligible though. > (Although it is the case that we probably do > need to get better at reviewing changes that go in via git trees.) Ohh yes, a lot better. Just look at ALSA, most of SNDRV_HWDEP* should never have gotten in in the first place, especially some recent ones like SNDRV_HWDEP_IFACE_SB_RC, and even some (SNDRV_HWDEP_IFACE_USX2Y*) are security holes the size of Cleveland. I need to continue documenting the Alsa kernel interface, but I need a new bucket, the first one is overflowing. > A much more important effect is that non-maintainers aren't familiar > with coding and patch submission guidelines. For example, in > suspend2, Nigel first tried with patches that were too monolithic, > and then his next series was too broken down such that it was too > hard to review (and "git bisect" wouldn't work). All his submissions since 2004 or so? It's a little easy to limit oneself to the last two ones. > And of course, there are people who assume that the rules shouldn't > apply to their filesystem... It may be a little hard to remove XFS at that point though... And, while it's not a filesystem, I'd love to be pointed to the technical discussion deciding whether uswsusp is a good idea. OG. [1] All optional, I know.