[U-Boot-Users] Re: [PATCH][CFT] bring ARM memory layout in line with the documentation

[Wolfgang Denk]

In message <20031016105052.GR25427 at pengutronix.de> you wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 16, 2003 at 12:31:11PM +0200, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> > I do not see the need for an "unstable branch".  On  contrary,  I  am
> > convinced  that  a second branch in the public source tree would only
> > increase the necessary maintenance efford.
> 
> Unfortunately this makes non-orthogonal patches difficult because they
> surely could break things. 

I disagree. It just means that we will have to make sure to clean  up
any such mess quickly, at least before the next release.

This is a policy decision. It prevents that the project  is  drifting
apart  in  different  directions.  I  don't  have the manpower and/or
nerves to deal with many different branches.

Branches are evil. Just look at the mess we  have  with  the  PowerPC
Linux  kernel.  There  is  linux-2.4 and linux-2.5 on kernel.org, and
linuxppc-2.4 and linuxppc_2_4_devel and linuxppc-2.5 and BenH's "pmac
stable tree" and the ameslab tree and the ppc64 tree and ...


If some change breaks the code so hard that it is impossible  to  fix
it between releases that the change needs to be reworked first.

We did without branches when marging in ARMBoot, and when adding more
architectures, and we will try to do without branches in the  future.
Period.


Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
Software Engineering:  Embedded and Realtime Systems,  Embedded Linux
Phone: (+49)-8142-4596-87  Fax: (+49)-8142-4596-88  Email: wd at denx.de
There are bugs and then there are bugs.  And then there are bugs.
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