Subject: Re: [PATCH -next] lib: Move find_last_bit.o to obj-y to enable use by modules.

From: Paul Mundt <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:29:30 +0900

On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 01:12:54PM +0300, Benny Halevy wrote:
> On Apr. 23, 2009, 9:50 +0300, Paul Mundt <[email-masked]> wrote:
> > Ok, so we have two different trivial patches for fixing the same thing,
> > and a week later it is still broken.
> > 
> > I realize it is a trivial patch, but it does break builds. If folks
> > aren't going to take these sorts of things more seriously, then their
> > tree should be dropped after a grace period (say 2 days or so).
> > 
> > Beyond that, it doesn't seem like -next has any sort of coherent policy
> > for dealing with trivial patches. If the emphasis is on the tree that
> > introduced the regression to deal with it, then trees need to be
> > aggressively dropped when these things go unfixed.
> > 
> > Having builds broken for a week for an issue that has been spotted and
> > fixed by several people is simply unacceptable.
> 
> Paul, that's a valid point but I don't set these polices.
> Trond suggested to just commit this to 2.6.30
> and I asked Rusty's Ack here:
> http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/4/21/489
> 
> Like I said there, I'm not sure who to send this patch to.
> Ingo?
> 
I was under the impression that a tree that caused a build regression
would be dropped until it had it sorted out, but that seems to be more
the exception than the rule.

-next is good at finding bugs in build configurations folks haven't
considered, which should serve as a pretty good platform for getting
those types of fixes merged quickly, whether it be in to the tree that
caused the regression or -next directly.

Unfortunately it seems like build regressions are more of an afterthought
than a show stopper. I count at least 3 on the sh builds in the last
couple weeks that are all averaging a week or longer to unbreak, while
patches have been available almost immediately.