Linus On GEM Patches: UNTESTED CRAP

Yesterday we shared that the patches for Intel's GEM (the Graphics Execution Manager) were submitted for inclusion into Linux 2.6.28. Those patches that added in GEM along with a few other Direct Rendering Manager improvements have landed into the mainline Linux git tree, but not without commentary from Linus Torvalds.

Linus became outraged over new DRM warnings and what Linus describes as horribly bad code. Linus is calling out on developers to write cleaner, more readable, and modular code. He describes the Linux 2.6.28 merges thus far as full of "UNTESTED CRAP." The patches being referred to are revised from yesterday with accommodating a few code clean-ups that had since hit the kernel tree along with a CVE fix (David Airlie's mailing list message).

While Linus accepted these important patches into the kernel that provide a memory manager for use by graphics drivers, he did provide a clean-up patch. His comments can be found on the dri-devel mailing list. This isn't the first time Linus has been enraged by DRM patches but back in August he had denied patches citing them as "TOO F*CKING LATE" in the Linux 2.6.27 development cycle.