Bcachefs Fixes Pull Once Again Frustrates Linus Torvalds - Two Choices Offered

[Developer12]

With "play better with others" an effort to enhance communication and collaboration with other Linux kernel developers/testers/etc. Or "take your toy and go home" effectively alluding to taking it out of the mainline Linux kernel and go back to developing it out-of-tree.

I see Michael has decided the story isn't spicy enough and has decided to add some spice of his own invention.

[curfew]

The alternative would be for linus to start enforcing some structure, like refusing to merge fixes until the next merge window if Kent is late. Would that actually bring Kent in line from an attitude standpoint though? Not so sure.

That's Linus's real problem: he's being the enabler. He says that he really doesn't like it, but he'll still do it, but will also keep whining how it's wrong. It isn't wrong because you're letting it happen!

[Developer12]

Some small part of me wonders if the "go write your own filesystem" comment is a none-too-subtle dig at the massive filesystem envy the linux kernel has had for the last 20 years or so. Four other OSs have a high-quality and reliable next-gen filesystem, but the linux community can't help but be assholes to it's devs just because of Not Invented Here when it's developers go out of their way to support linux as well. Meanwhile the kernel's previous best attempt at a comparable filesystem has fizzled with no hope on the horizon for maturity.

It's definitely no secret that Kent has a saviour complex with his "that won't eat your data" line.

[billyswong]

I wouldn't trust a filesystem written by developer who doesn't at least try to compile their code. It doesn't matter in or out of tree, it is just stupid to use. And after that some people dare to call btrfs unstable...

Well, we are facing the fact that codes that compile for one computer may not compile for another if they are not the same architecture. It could be Kent thinking "hey I have tested my code (in my computers) thoroughly".

[fitzie]

I don't think it's unwarranted for linux to pull the filesystem from mainline. Kent is clearly trying to get fixes merged that are untested, and they're breaking things for other mainline contributors (like people who support big endian architectures). It might even knock Kent's attitude down a peg or two.

I don't think it's reached that point yet, but I also haven't seen the full total of the breakage Kent's bad patches have caused for other contributors.

The alternative would be for linus to start enforcing some structure, like refusing to merge fixes until the next merge window if Kent is late. Would that actually bring Kent in line from an attitude standpoint though? Not so sure.

nothing will get him inline from an attitude standpoint, but it will get him to follow the process. his attitude is to blame linus and the other kernel devs for bcachefs failures, and that's why he's made the process his personal enemy. he goes into this long winded explanation about how posting patches to mailing list will damage his team, because they may review insignificant patches due to it. he blames stable not immediately cutting a release on kent's schedule a significant harm to his users/distro instead of just given them a documented tree to get any last minute fixes from.

[jacob]

Seriously, what's this? Bcachefs is an interesting project and I wish it well, but Kent's apparent inability to follow a long established kernel development process is just unprofessional and more akin to a hobby hack. It doesn't inspire confidence in the tech.

[TheMightyBuzzard]

Seriously, what's this? Bcachefs is an interesting project and I wish it well, but Kent's apparent inability to follow a long established kernel development process is just unprofessional and more akin to a hobby hack. It doesn't inspire confidence in the tech.

Yeah, I've worked with plenty of guys with that sort of attitude. Every last time I ended up having to pick up their work on top of mine when they got mad or depressed and flounced off the job, usually because everyone else didn't sufficiently feed their narcissism with daily adulation and praise of their every idea. Unfortunately it's not always possible to spot it ahead of time so you can turn the job down.

[loganj]

kent answer .... is he older than 10?

[erniv2]

Its opensource. Everyone can pull their own tree. You can even have your own tree which if it becomes popular gives you the power to decide what is in it.

Many Arm vendors also have their own trees which often differentiate very significantly from mainline - and everyone hates them for it. The raspberry pi foundation also have their own pseudo tree which has a lot of code that has not yet been upstreamed.

In general the community have liked how Linus does it so that has been the main tree. In the past before he discontinued it I think it was Andrew Morton who had a separate fairly popular tree. He discontinued it in favour of Linus' tree.

So you telling me i can create my own OS right now, when i pull the git linux sourceee now and declare thats now erniv2nux, thats my own linux thing?

[intelfx]

Kent seems to do nothing but throw fixes at the wall and ship them, hoping that eventually the bugs will be solved because he's hopefully fixing more bugs than he's introducing, and to hell with what happens to people's data along the way. No thanks.

Bcachefs has what's likely the best CI setup among all Linux filesystems.