Linus Torvalds Isn't Happy With Some Of The Bcachefs Code For Linux 6.9

[fitzie]

You mean this?:




Christian wrote this 2 days ago and Kent didn't push back. Did I miss any of the "battle"?

You could have called the "split it up" discussion "a war" if you want:







But all I see a discussion about how it should be done...

yes. he constantly pushes people for no reason. i didn't mean to imply it was a big fight, but he shouldn't of even asked. he did the same thing with his original submission of bcachefs for inclusion. he still constantly threatens to "go to linus" and he needs to "pick your battles". go look at his latest 6.7 stable backport request:

> Why wasn't this applied?

Because our queue is huge and 1/2 of the stable team is finally taking
his first vacation in years (and regretting reading email during it
right now)? Relax, it will get there, backport requests like this not
being handled in 48 hours seems like a big ask, don't you think?

i know you are going to stan for kent, but he's on a bad path whether you admit it or not. he's treating 6.7 backports as super important when there's literally hundreds of critical bugs to be shaken out of bcachefs. he should be focusing on developing the process of maintaining an in kernel filesystem, not stressing out when he's patch isn't included immediately.

[Weasel]

If this is "normal", then I cannot help but think that he himself is contributing to the maintainer burnout that he has spoken of - working in an environment where you are constantly subject to the judgment of a man who goes out of his way to be discourteous is quite tiring, in my experience.

Don't write garbage in the first place, then, and you won't be.

[Doomer]

From the two messages quoted here, at least, 3% (12 of 424) of the total words written by Torvalds add no substance to the critique, and serve no purpose other than to add drama to the points he's making, or to belittle someone's work:

"senseless...horrendous...disgusting...disgusting. ..nonsensical...insane...idiotic...garbage...point less...garbage...horrendous...stupid"

If this is "normal", then I cannot help but think that he himself is contributing to the maintainer burnout that he has spoken of - working in an environment where you are constantly subject to the judgment of a man who goes out of his way to be discourteous is quite tiring, in my experience.

it's much better this way than to walk on eggs to not scratch any weak ego, if your code is dogshit then dogshit is the correct way to describe it, it does not matter if you don't like it, you're an adult, right? You should have the mental bandwidth to deal with it, if you don't, stay away from things that make you upset, as simple as.

[Weasel]

Overstreet submitted a pull request. Torvalds reviewed the request and demurred, giving reasons, It's now a technical discussion, and Overstreet is free to make changes and submit another request. A request is not a demand, or order, even if some people appear to confuse the terms.

Except that's what he always does. He demands everyone follows his stupid choices and styles. Or at least used to.

[Radtraveller]

To me it just sounds like Linus was frustrated a bit. He mentioned discussing the exact same issues in the past.. and while a couple cosmetic changes were made, the submission basically ignored the previous stuff and tried to “slip it past” review.

[varikonniemi]

> Sorry, you were talking about mean absolute deviation; that does work
> here.

Yes, I meant mean, not median.

But the confusion is my fault - I wrote MAD and then to "explain"
that, I put "median" in my own email - so you read it right the first
time, and it was just me being sloppy and confusing things.

They are both called MAD in their own contexts, and they are much too
easy to confuse.

My bad,

Linus

Seems like they have a very professional relationship. Unlike FUDsters tried to put forward in this thread.

[NotMine999]

Except that's what he always does. He demands everyone follows his stupid choices and styles. Or at least used to.

You are you speaking of in this quote? Linus? or Kent?

Inquiring minds want to know.

[NotMine999]

To me it just sounds like Linus was frustrated a bit. He mentioned discussing the exact same issues in the past.. and while a couple cosmetic changes were made, the submission basically ignored the previous stuff and tried to “slip it past” review.

I would agree.

I think from Linus' POV a kernel-level maintainer should know the level of code quality & format that is expected of them and accepted into the kernel.

If a kernel-level maintainer cannot work at that level then the kernel-level maintainer has 2 clear choices: (1) improve their work; or, (2) step down.

There is a 3rd choice, but that's where the kernel-level maintainer is specifically inviting (byt being utterly obstinate, or "bull headed" if you like) Linus to trash the kernel-level maintainer in public before ending their assignment and sending them packing.

After all, it is Linus' project and the chief maintainer & project lead so he does get the last word. If folks don't like that they can fork it and go their own way.

[NotMine999]

Challenge: impossible

Impossible?

Because you have not tried to reach that level?

[Quackdoc]

I would agree.

I think from Linus' POV a kernel-level maintainer should know the level of code quality & format that is expected of them and accepted into the kernel.

If a kernel-level maintainer cannot work at that level then the kernel-level maintainer has 2 clear choices: (1) improve their work; or, (2) step down.

There is a 3rd choice, but that's where the kernel-level maintainer is specifically inviting (byt being utterly obstinate, or "bull headed" if you like) Linus to trash the kernel-level maintainer in public before ending their assignment and sending them packing.

After all, it is Linus' project and the chief maintainer & project lead so he does get the last word. If folks don't like that they can fork it and go their own way.

I would highly reccomend following the mailing list for a couple months and you will find that kent is most certainly not the only developer doing stuff like this lol. It can be hard to know exactly what changes are needed and which ones aren't really possible, sometimes you will have to actively argue your case, sometimes you need to give up and try a different approach. it's as simple as that