[Aboriginal] Pondering an intermediate release.

Rob Landley rob at landley.net
Thu Jan 10 19:02:00 PST 2013


On 01/10/2013 12:56:03 AM, Bjørn Forsman wrote:
> On 10 January 2013 04:12, Rob Landley <rob at landley.net> wrote:
> [...]
> > I'm testing linux-3.8-rc2 and it more or less works. (One patch  
> tweak
> > required.) I can cut the release with -rc2 or -rc3 and then cut  
> another
> > release when 3.8 proper comes out, or I can cut a second release  
> with 3.7.
> > Any strong opinions one way or the other?
> 
> Well, this is not a strong opinion, but I'd prefer a release with 3.7
> over 3.8-rc[23]. My reasoning is that the 3.7 kernel must be more
> stable because it *is* released, and the 3.8 kernel is not (it's just
> an early release candidate).

Understood, and thanks for the opinion. I'm sort of ambivalent myself,  
which is why I asked.

3.7-rc3 was just released. Personally, I find this non-release release  
thing confusing. I know that -rc1 is what the "odd" series used to be,  
and then the other -rc iterations are just Linus trying to browbeat  
people into testing it. :)

But for Aboriginal Linnux, I'm the one doing the testing on the  
kernels. The final package versions are broken on various targets all  
the time, as in "does not even compile in my configuration", and then  
"doesn't boot", and then "doesn't quite work right due to that ext4  
bug" or the time stat was broken on sparc for 3 releases to the point  
ls -l gave a date thousands of years in the future...

Release versions of kernels are useful because it gives people known  
versions to play with, where everybody syncs up and sees approximately  
the same features/bugs, and 18 months down the road it's easier to  
remember (or look up) what was in a release.

But bug fixes happen all the time, that's why we're up to 3.7.1 and  
3.6.11.

(And I sort of assume people are likely to replace the kernel if the  
actually deploy stuff, the ones I'm doing are just for qemu, not for  
actual hardware.)

> But if you're making an aboriginal *release candidate*, using some
> 3.8-rcX is totally fine (IMO).

I generally don't do release candidates. If I bother to test and tar it  
up, it's a release. If I _know_ it doesn't work, I don't make a  
release. If I find out later it's broken, I make another release, ala  
now. People can build source control snapshots at any time, so I don't  
see the point in an -rc.

However, the question I asked is a bit moot because it turns out  
there's some more stuff to fix in toybox first. (Testing for a release  
tends to find stuff wrong, and it's usually one of those pull on a  
loose thread things...) Working on that now...

Thanks,

Rob`
 1357873320.0


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