linux-kernel - Re: When to push bug fixes to mainline

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Date:	Tue, 16 Jul 2013 00:19:16 -0700 (PDT)
From:	David Lang <david@...g.hm>
To:	Willy Tarreau <w@....eu>
cc:	"Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>,
	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, torvalds@...ux-foundation.org,
	akpm@...ux-foundation.org, stable@...r.kernel.org,
	ksummit-2013-discuss@...ts.linux-foundation.org
Subject: Re: When to push bug fixes to mainline

On Fri, 12 Jul 2013, Willy Tarreau wrote:

> And maybe in the end, having 1/10 patch cause a regression is not *that*
> dramatic, and probably less than not fixing the 9 other bugs. In one case
> we rely on -stable to merge the 10 fixes, and on the other case we'd rely
> on -stable to just revert one of them.

Apologies for the late post, I'm catching up on things, but this jumped out at 
me.

We went through a LOT of pain several years ago when people got into the mindset 
that a patch was acceptable if it fixed more people than it broke. eliminating 
that mindset did wonders for kernel stability.

Regressions are a lot more of a negative than bugfixes are a positive, a 10:1 
ratio of fixes to regressions is _not_ good enough.

David Lang
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