Natalie Protasevich

Bug Fixing and Kernel Code Quality

Submitted by Jeremy
on November 13, 2007 - 6:03am
Linux news

"This is the listing of the open bugs that are relatively new, around 2.6.22 and up. They are vaguely classified by specific area," Natalie Protasevich said, posting a current list of bugs each linking to an appropriate bugzilla.kernel.org entry. Andrew Morton reviewed the list, noting "no response from developers" in response to many of the bugs. David Miller pointed out that in some cases this wasn't true, referring to 46 bug fixes queued in his networking tree and another 10 already pushed upstream, "when someone like me is bug fixing full time, I take massive offense to the impression you're trying to give especially when it's directed at the networking. So turn it down a notch Andrew." Andrew wasn't convinced, "first we need to work out whether we have a problem. If we do this, then we can then have a think about what to do about it. I tried to convince the 2006 KS attendees that we have a problem and I resoundingly failed. People seemed to think that we're doing OK." He continued:

"This is not a minor matter. If the kernel _is_ slowly deteriorating then this won't become readily apparent until it has been happening for a number of years. By that stage there will be so much work to do to get us back to an acceptable level that it will take a huge effort. And it will take a long time after that for the kerel to get its reputation back. So it is important that we catch deterioration *early* if it is happening."