Torvalds Gets Tough on Kernel Contributors 246
ChocLinux writes "Linus Torvalds is cracking down on developers that add last-minute changes to the kernel during the two-week merge window. He says: 'If people miss the merge window or start abusing it with hurried last-minute things that just cause problems for -rc1, I'll just refuse to merge, and laugh in their faces derisively when they whine plaintively at me, and tell them there's going to be a new opening soon enough.'"
Get Tough! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And Linus complains about Slashdot.... (Score:5, Insightful)
by making a unqualified comment about linux kernel management and getting modded up for it...
Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not? He was stating an opinion, nothing more.
Controlling a process and stating an opinion are two entirely different things.'
Much ado about nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Enough time? (Score:2, Insightful)
You don't have to make the code in two weeks, you just have to submit it within that time frame, or wait untill next if you are not ready yet. So you can for example start coding now, and post the code after 10 years, but inside the 2 week time frame (assuming this policy is still used then, and your code still works with the current kernel at that time).
Re:And Linus complains about Slashdot.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Gaah. I don't tend to bother about slashdot, because quite frankly, the whole _point_ of slashdot is to have this big public wanking session with people getting together and making their own "insightful" comment on any random topic, whether they know anything about it or not.
Congratulations! We have a winner! The 3rd Annual Slashdot unintentional irony award goes to titwurstman!
He beat all comers this year due to his use of a quote suggesting that people on Slashdot comment on things they know nothing about, to support his Slashdot comment on something he knows nothing about!
The Slashdot editors have now permanently closed the competition, as it is widely agreed that nobody will ever top this year's winner!
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Linus frequently expresses himself using a type of wry humour which is quite alien to US audiences. It's not bitchy, it just doesn't translate well.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If my boss (Score:2, Insightful)
If you were chucking code into a major public release candidate 2 weeks before launch, I'm sure your quitting window would be rather short as you would be fired before too long.
No one involved is a child; suck it up, do some push-ups if required, and make sure you do things right next time.
Well Said! (Score:2, Insightful)
" If my boss used this tone with me, I would quit the job."
Spoken like a true college Sophomore.
I laugh in your general direction (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really imagine Linus will start jumping on planes and seeking out kernel contributers to laugh in their faces. Bloody hell, I know geeks have trouble with anything not strictly literal but sheesh.
I read it as "Certain people are repeatedly making changes at the last minute and I'd really rather they didn't".
Re:Let us not forget (Score:2, Insightful)
He's absolutely right! (Score:5, Insightful)
And what happens if in that "another release" another guy makes ONE MORE last minute change and... well you get the idea.
I've seen this happen at sourceforge projects, and this is what gives Open Source such a bad reputation - buggy projects. Sure, 999 bugs have been fixed, but 10 major flaws are introduced with the next version. Just search any SF project's bugs for "crash" or "segfault", and you'll get the idea (and these are reports about RELEASES, not cvs). And why does this happen? Because of devs NOT RESPECTING the timings!
So, please guys, p-l-e-a-s-e, respect the timing! This is Linux we're talking about, not some hobby project.
Re:Enough time? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway if you miss the window for kernel J.K.L there's always J.K.L+1 coming along. Meanwhile people with a burning desire for your patch can get it from you. It's annoying, but the person you should be annoyed with lives in your mirror.
Fork it! (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe his phrasing was a bit harsh, but remember that he is not just a developer - he really plays the role of Project Manager here, and sometimes the PM has to send a wakeup call. That's what this sounds like. Not that big a deal.
Think about all the failed FOSS projects where nobody did this - UserLinux and Hurd spring to mind. (Now for some posts telling me that Hurd isn't a failure, even though it's not production-ready after what, 16 years now?) Makes you kind of glad Linus is managing this thing.
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
RTFA or not, you've apparently never been part of a large, ongoing software project that was any good. You DO NOT submit "new stuff" during the merge window! That's what the previous 50 weeks in the year were for.
Two weeks is a manageably aggressive timeframe during which to reconcile compatibility issues across a moderately large codebase. The acceptance of entirely new code during this window potentially starts the reconciliation process all over again at square one. Usually it would be less than that, but if you accept one new submission, you almost have to accept them all. So it could still become a never-ending process, indistinguishable from the preceeding development cycle which the merge window is supposed to define.
Therefore, if you're going to have a cutoff date at all, you've really got to be strict about it or the merge becomes a nightmare.
If you really do have something new and important which absolutely does need to get into the release, then the cutoff date would have been selected to accomodate your new code.
It's not as if there's no dialogue...
Re:Get Tough! (Score:1, Insightful)
It's called "sustaining" instead of "enhancing" the software. If you mix up which is which, they yell at you bloody murder.
Most companys have things called "schedules", "budgets", and "project scope", if you exceed one or more of those, they go "apeshit" and you get "fired".
Not everyone is making new software, in fact most companies are now trying to dig themselves out of the hole they dug in the late 90's with their "time to market is king" strategy.
The project I'm doing now is replacing seven megs of C++ spaghetti code with a java implementation that isn't even a thousand lines of code. I'm not even using any java classes outside of java.net, java.util, and java.lang. One of the SBC guys tried to add an "enhancement" by allowing more than one phone number to be entered (the back end system supported it), and he was fired.
I totally see where linux is coming from. If people aren't even in Unit Testing for their stuff at this point, there's no point in even trying to merge.
Re:Good (Score:1, Insightful)
I find that people who are constantly late, or underestimate the time something takes to do something right, never quite understand the cost of doing things late or the last minute. They certainly don't understand (or care) how it effects others.
If it were me, I'd be a big bitch about it. But then again, nobody likes me - it's a trade off.
Re:Good (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but you cannot laugh in the face of people who voluntarily help for absolutely no money.
There is a line between managing someone and mocking him. Roughly 100% of the time, mockery leads to nothing productive. And mocking your people is not being "tougher", it's being an incompetent manager.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
This announcement is good management practice though.
The public declaration of harsh measures means people won't be so hurt by rejection of their MyLifesBlood patches to the kernel - it's not personal anymore, just policy:)
Much of Linux success can be attributed to Linus ability to balance personalities and technologies. And, believe me, there are some Piece of Work personalities that happen to be tied together in single person packages with rare intellects and feverish workaholicism. Many technical managers are doing great if they can just not too badly piss off the prima donnas responsible for the great ideas and the hard work.
linus has my sympathy (Score:4, Insightful)
With a product as complex as a kernel you need lots of time to properly test and integrate stuff. A kernel release needs to be stable & reliable. Last minute changes with unkown impact are unacceptable unless they fix something that absolutely needs to be fixed.
The git scm tool that linus uses actually supports this development style very well. Developers develop and send in patches to a central repository. Linus pulls the important patches and patches his private repository for a few weeks and then locks it down for testing. That's why he can afford to tell developers to wait or adjust to his schedule.
In this respect he is quite ahead of the clearcase/cvs and svn using masses. These tools do not support this kind of development very well. The mental model of the developers is still that they need to get their stuff in the trunk asap. With git the model is get your patch out, have it tested, optimized and when it is mature and ready Linus will merge it when this fits his release schedule. For complicated changes this process should be slow or otherwise Linus ends up doing the work that should have been done before the merge.
This model is way better than freeze trunk, tell everybody to not do anything for a few months and then release.
Re:Much ado about nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
the 'and laugh in their faces derisively' comment is just an indication that Linus thinks this is important. I don't know Linus, and I think I only know one person who ever might Linus, but I know from reading enough articles what his personality and sense of humor are like. Threatening to laugh derisively at someone is a little different from throwing a chair in anger...
Re:Much ado about nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
Excuse me, but who is saying that it is bad in business? I flat out said that it goes on all the time. When I worked on HP-UX, we had about 5 of us who did not check in our work continually. When merges occured, it caused issues and managers would get pissed. And yes, they would sound off just like Linus did. I never felt that it was "bad", as they were justified.
In fact, where do you see anybody saying that a business doing it is bad? Your statement has the same logic of "You still beating your wife?"