From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753231AbXLISmA (ORCPT ); Sun, 9 Dec 2007 13:42:00 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750880AbXLISlx (ORCPT ); Sun, 9 Dec 2007 13:41:53 -0500 Received: from smtp2.linux-foundation.org ([207.189.120.14]:45880 "EHLO smtp2.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750845AbXLISlw (ORCPT ); Sun, 9 Dec 2007 13:41:52 -0500 Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2007 10:41:30 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds To: Alan Cox cc: Tejun Heo , Andrew Morton , "Rafael J. Wysocki" , LKML , Ingo Molnar Subject: Re: 2.6.24-rc4-git5: Reported regressions from 2.6.23 In-Reply-To: <20071209134217.7ff02dd2@the-village.bc.nu> Message-ID: References: <200712080340.49546.rjw@sisk.pl> <20071208015227.3a1c7fae.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <475B9270.6070902@gmail.com> <20071209134217.7ff02dd2@the-village.bc.nu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sun, 9 Dec 2007, Alan Cox wrote: > > Great, make everyone else wait another three months for a working CD > drive. The one off regression appears far less harmful than a revert. Btw, Alan, that "math" is total and utter BULLSH*T, and you should know that. "The one off regression" is likely the tip of an iceberg. If something regresses for one person, for that one person who tested and noticed and made a bug-report, there's probably a thousand people who haven't even tested the development kernel, or who had problems and just went back to the previous version. In contrast, reverting something will be guaranteed to not have those kinds of issues, since the only people who could notice are people for who it never worked in the first place. There's no "silent mass of people" that can be affected. This is why regressions are so important. They don't trump _everything_, but basically ignoring and letting them slide is *much* more painful than just reverting it. The biggest reason to ignore a regression is if nobody can even figure out where it came from, or reverting simply isn't an option for some really deep and fundamental issue. That doesn't seem to be the case here. So we should revert unless there is some known acceptable real fix. Linus