[LinuxBIOS] lnxi-merge complete

[Richard Smith]

On 10/26/05, Lu, Yinghai <yinghai.lu at amd.com> wrote:

> I don't think two trees are needed, that will create more work.

I see that I sent my reply only to Stefan rather than the list. Oops. 
Gotta quit cranking out e-mails right before lunch *grin*

> I mean every committer must not break the current code at least it can
> compile through before the commit can be made. Just need he to spend 5
> more minutes to double check it.

Well the trick here is how to do this effectively across the board. 
Can any one developer be effective at dealing with all the chips
supported and platforms supported?  And how far can you run this
before you swamp a developer?  Its LB's goals to try and expand the
number of chipsets we support right?

Consider that in the power-pc or ARM cross-compile setup the compiler
may not even be installed on the developers system.  Making it really
hard to verify if you broke things.

And even if the code compiles that's still only the first step.  Those
are the _easy_ fixes. Its when you tickle a subtle hardware bug that
things will get icky.

Things like autobuilders and code reviews are big helps but ultimately
somebody has got to try and compile and run the code on the hardware
and do some tests.  The best person for that job is a developer
working on that platform.  And for that to happen the patches have to
be available prior to commit.  In absence of a different tree then
perhaps there is an RFC period for patches?  A lot like the kernel
does.  Post the patch(s) let people mess with it and then apply them
when the developers for that platform are cool with the results.

--
Richard A. Smith