Date: Wed, 11 Feb 1998 09:16:49 -0800 (PST) From: Brian Handy <handy@sag.space.lockheed.com> To: Adrian Chadd <adrian@obiwan.creative.net.au> Cc: Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@americantv.com>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Hollywood (Re: PATCH.M ) Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.3.96.980211090207.12711A-100000@sag.space.lockheed.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.95q.980212005051.1744B-100000@obiwan.creative.net.au>
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>>> [A vigorous discussion of the purpose of the -current branch] >> >> Of course, at this point, several things may break, since the developer may >> not have been able to test all the various kernel permutations on their >> machine. But usually, the fundamental code is fairly stable, and it it just >> a matter of squashing some last bugs, not making major changes to the code. > >If I mention VM code would someone kill me? :-) (Not taking a personal >attack at anyone here, so please don't read it as such.. :) [Brian swiftly jumps in to feed the fire] Hmm, I remember to Jordan referring to the lite2 merge as "Black Sunday"... :-) Over the ages, I've seen probably whole *months* where -current was totally unreliable dumping ground, and although it's a noble idea to think everything that goes into -current is well tested and just needs a few bugs ironed out, that's not necessarily always the case, and IMHO it shouldn't be. As one of my Physics profs once said, during a particularly brutal homework set: "I relate your experience here to growing plants. They grow most when they're under a great deal of stress." I identify with that, and if you want to see FreeBSD move forward in something other than tinny incremental steps, I think once in a while it's time to kick the tires really hard and see what happens. Lite2 did that, I think SMP did it to a lesser extent, ELF is going to brutalize the -current branch. I imagine Terry's patches would fall somewhere between the extremes. Now, I also agree with Nate, in that it would sure be nice if people had at least a *vague* idea what his stuff did, but it's couched in such extreme lingo that nobody can, and Terry has a hard time boiling it down to something reasonable. Things have progressed significantly, though, in that people are talking about his work now. I claim this is new. If Terry can spend a bit more time with a committer and give them a warm feeling about what the patches *might* do, I suspect they might be worth getting into the system, if the product is as good as the hype. There has been noise about how "but this isn't how we wanted to do this change", but to Terry's advantage he's actually *done* the work. <duck> Brian To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe current" in the body of the message
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