From owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Aug 3 21:26:59 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 64755106568C; Sun, 3 Aug 2008 21:26:59 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [209.31.154.42]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D0D9E8FC1C; Sun, 3 Aug 2008 21:26:58 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [209.31.154.41]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8FB6846B42; Sun, 3 Aug 2008 17:26:57 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2008 22:26:57 +0100 (BST) From: Robert Watson X-X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Ed Schouten In-Reply-To: <20080803204645.GD99951@hoeg.nl> Message-ID: References: <20080801113935.GM99951@hoeg.nl> <20080803.112856.35218914.imp@bsdimp.com> <20080803194844.GA99951@hoeg.nl> <20080803.141744.-552483469.imp@bsdimp.com> <20080803204645.GD99951@hoeg.nl> User-Agent: Alpine 1.10 (BSF 962 2008-03-14) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: arch@freebsd.org, FreeBSD Current Subject: Re: Reminder: non-mpsafetty drivers to be connected on Sunday X-BeenThere: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussion related to FreeBSD architecture List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:26:59 -0000 On Sun, 3 Aug 2008, Ed Schouten wrote: > * Robert Watson wrote: >> I'm a fan of giving it a week or two breather and focusing on updating >> drivers, documentation, etc, and then merging it all in mid-august. I >> don't think there's any need to delay things a month, > > My thoughts exactly. I also mentioned this in a private message to Warner. > I'm sure we'll talk about this at the DevSummit, which is a good thing. As I > once mentioned, it would be rather painful for me if we would delay it too > long, because now is my summer break and in September it is not. I think this sounds fine. My big concern, btw, is not in any way with the shape/quality of the work you've done --- rather, it's that I want to avoid, as much as possible, knocking people off the head of 8.x as developers or users. Experience suggests that the more rough bumps people get on the development head, the more likely they are to fall back to some or another -stable, or try to "wait out" the problem by going away for a month or two. This has a negative impact on testing, since it means fewer users, and it has a negative impact on overall development rate. It's not that that any particular breakage is the end of the world, it's just that as people bump along, they eventually hit a bump there they could spend four more hours trying to figure out why the box appears not to boot, or they could just fall back and get work done, and you get a gradual attrition. This is, btw, one reason why using Perforce has actually significant accelerated development: projects are more mature before they are merged, so are less likely to knock people off. Which doesn't mean we don't need occasional breakage, it just means we have to moderate it, give people plenty of warning, etc. This avoids cascading and cyclic development failures along the lines of "I'll wait until bgfsck is stable before trying HEAD and fixing KSE", "I'll wait until KSE is stable before trying HEAD and fixing SMP", etc. :-) Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge