linux-kernel - Re: Oops report for the week preceding June 16th, 2008

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Date:	Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:34:45 -0700
From:	Arjan van de Ven <arjan@...ux.intel.com>
To:	Dave Jones <davej@...hat.com>,
	Johannes Berg <johannes@...solutions.net>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>, arjan@...ux.intel.com,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, torvalds@...ux-foundation.org,
	akpm@...ux-foundation.org, tglx@...utronix.de,
	linville@...driver.com, gregkh@...e.de
Subject: Re: Oops report for the week preceding June 16th, 2008

Dave Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 09:24:14PM +0200, Johannes Berg wrote:
>  > 
>  > > i have no gripes about the current situation of wireless in linux-next, 
>  > > other than it all came 1-2 years too late:
>  > 
>  > Clearly, you don't have a clue about wireless. I'll admit to being
>  > pissed off by statements like this because I personally spent a lot of
>  > time getting wireless code into shape for merging, and it took a long
>  > time.
>  > 
>  > If we'd have merged the existing wireless drivers 2 years ago, we would
>  > have (at least) four 802.11 stacks in the kernel now, at least two
>  > legally questionable drivers (the ath5k legal situation would probably
>  > never have been cleared up, acx100 still isn't), no uniform API so it
>  > would be impossible to write userspace support tools etc.
> 
> FWIW, the fact that there's so much churn happening in wireless right
> now is IMO, a sign of its health.

I totally agree with that. In fact I'm quite happy with the progress.


> It's been something of a double edged sword.  It's great that users are
> getting the latest drivers & fixes, but at the same time, it means they
> get exposed to all the latest breakage at the same time.
> Given the volume of change occuring, cherry-picking isn't an enviable task,
> so distros are stuck between this reality, or leaving users hanging until we
> get to the next point release.
> 
> FWIW, wireless isn't unique in this regard. For eg, the last few months we've
> always been shipping the latest ALSA bits rather than what's in kernel.org too,
> for similar reasons -- when bugs appear, the developers want to know
> "does it still happen with the latest bits?"
> 


this is the part that concerns me.  The fact that you feel the need to use "not yet in mainline" pieces
(I'm not so much talking about backporting from 2.6.26-git to 2.6.25; that's perfectly fine, but I'm
talking about code not in 2.6.26-git) is NOT a healthy sign.... if that truely is the case then that code surely
deserves to be in mainline as well?
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