On Thu, 30 Mar 2006, Frederik Schueler wrote:
Hello,
I would like to schedule the upload of linux-2.6 2.6.15 for tomorrow,
friday 31st.
Thanks to Waldi, the external modules build issue is fixed now, making
this a pretty important update.
Does anyone have other issues left which should be in -5, or does the
schedule fit?
The other upload candidate is linux-kbuild-2.6: like kernel-kbuild-2.6-3
in sarge, this fixes the problem of cross-compiled linux-header packages
containing binaries from the host-arch and not the target arch, as those
binaries are shipped in this kbuild package.
Ok, I have a comment on that. Isn't one of the major goals of making
kernels to build from a single source was to avoid the pain of having to
deal with separate kbuild package? I consider it a major change, why
wasn't it discussed on the list? I have absolutely no clue why such change
is required, and I don't think other members of the team do either.
As you can probably tell, I am not very happy with the way the kernel team
operates. In the last few weeks commits with legitimate bugfixes by
myself and other people have been reverted without explanation. I have
tried to start the discussion on what I consider an important issue -
maintenance of out of tree modules - only to receive the feedback of 2
(two) members of the kernel team (out of registered 28) and a message from
Bastian effectively saying that something is already implemented, and
there is no need to bother. The bug list is growing, initramfs generators
are constantly buggy and we still cannot make a major release without
screwing up the linux-headers in one way or another.
What I would like to see is more attention to the quality assurance, and
less to pushing new untested code into the archive, which leads to
embarrassment for the team pretty much at every release. It's true,
usually the problems get fixed fast, but at what cost? The first week
after 2.6.16 we were uploading pretty much every day, and on slower arches
the buildds were finishing the builds just in time for the next upload. Do
our users benefit from that? I sincerely doubt it.
I don't know whether there is a solution for all these problems we are
facing. I believe that having somebody in a position of at least nominal
authority would help a lot. Such person could make sure that the design
decisions are properly discussed, and would have the last word in the
questions which are controversial, or which no one cares about. He could
finally introduce a reasonable upload schedule, coordinate tasks, and care
about QA issues a bit more than we currently do. He could plan ahead,
having in mind that after all, we do plan to release at some point, and we
have to stop hacking on the packaging and try to stabilize it.
So, that's my rant. I don't see a point on working on packaging anymore,
since it is not inconceivable that at any point my work might be
overwritten by somebody else. Please don't take it a threat to resign
(or as a proposal to expell someone :-), I do enjoy working on sparc
kernel and on general bugs. I would just like people to think about where
we, as a team, want to be now and in the future.
Best regards,
Jurij Smakov [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Key: http://www.wooyd.org/pgpkey/ KeyID: C99E03CC
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