A modest proposal -- We need a patch penguin
Ingo Molnar:
Quoted 8 lines
If a patch gets ignored 33 times in a row then perhaps the person doing the patch should first think really hard about the following 4 issues:
- cleanliness
- concept
- timing
- testing
Quoted 4 lines
a violation of any of these items can cause patch to be dropped *without notice*. Face it, it's not Linus' task to teach people how to code or how to write correct patches. Sure, he still does teach people most of the time, but you cannot *expect* him to be able to do it 100% of the time.
Since the "33 times in a row" seems to refer to my bad experience with the Configure.help patches, I think I need to correct a misconception.
The patches in question were *documentation*. No concept issue, no timing issue, no testing issue (I don't know what a "cleanliness" issue would be in this context). I know that Michael Elizabeth Chastain, the listed CML1 maintainer, has had similar frustrating exoeriences trying to get documentation patches folded in.
We're not talking about obscure internals changes that could break the kernel, we're talking zero-risk patches submitted by official maintainers. This is not a situation that ought to require a lot of judgment or attention on Linus's part.
The fact that Linus *does* have to pass on all such patches, and is dropping a lot of them them on the floor, is the clearest possible example of the weaknesses in the present system.
Signature · 1 line
<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>