Crazy idea

[Hans de Goede]

Hi all,

Reading the thread about adding support to the kernel spec file to build a 
vanilla kernel, I had this crazy (really crazy) idea:

Wouldn't it be great to share one kernel package or atleast one kernel source 
(as in pristine source + patches) between different distro's?

The kernel is a _very_ important and complicated piece of software, which 
requires many many eyes, I'm sure that many kernel bugs are hitting more then 
one distro, and some are fixed with distro specific patches in one distro, but 
not in the next.

So in an ideal word all distro's would have one kernel with a team made of the 
current maintainers from all distros  working on it. I know this is impossible 
taking the different rate of changes between distro's but maybe ubuntu + suse? 
+ Fedora could use a common kernel source?

I know this is a really long shot, but if we could pull it off it would be 
really great.

As said a really crazy (as in probably undoable) idea. So if not this, then 
what can be done to work better together on the kernel side of distro's, maybe 
a distro-kernel-maintainers-list(a)kernel.org?

And maybe also a common bugzilla?

Call me crazy but I think a lot could be gained here.

Regards,

Hans

[Dave Jones]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 07:50:55PM +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
>  Hi all,
>  
>  Reading the thread about adding support to the kernel spec file to build a 
>  vanilla kernel, I had this crazy (really crazy) idea:
>  
>  Wouldn't it be great to share one kernel package or atleast one kernel source 
>  (as in pristine source + patches) between different distro's?
>  
>  The kernel is a _very_ important and complicated piece of software, which 
>  requires many many eyes, I'm sure that many kernel bugs are hitting more then 
>  one distro, and some are fixed with distro specific patches in one distro, but 
>  not in the next.
>  
>  So in an ideal word all distro's would have one kernel with a team made of the 
>  current maintainers from all distros  working on it. I know this is impossible 
>  taking the different rate of changes between distro's but maybe ubuntu + suse? 
>  + Fedora could use a common kernel source? 
Not completely infeasible. Though there are differences in the choice of
CONFIG_ options between distros too.  Eg, Ubuntu are the only people
loopy enough to enable CONFIG_PREEMPT.  Other distros might need to
enable some backward compatibility options because their userspace isn't
up to date, etc, etc.

The actual patches we carry are rarely the cause the problems that get reported.
It's fairly uncommon for us to change drivers other than perhaps the
occasional compile fix which usually goes upstream quickly.  Yet that's
by far where most of the bugs that get reported are against.

Pretty much every time someone who files a Fedora kernel bug who then
builds their own vanilla kernel and it 'works', it's because they
chose different CONFIG options rather than the fact that it's vanilla.

>  As said a really crazy (as in probably undoable) idea. So if not
> this, then 
>  what can be done to work better together on the kernel side of distro's, maybe 
>  a distro-kernel-maintainers-list(a)kernel.org? 
There is actually a kernel-packagers@ list already there, but it's really
low traffic.

>  And maybe also a common bugzilla? 
http://bugme.osdl.org :-)

	Dave

-- 
http://www.codemonkey.org.uk

[Chuck Ebbert]

Dave Jones wrote:
>  
>  The actual patches we carry are rarely the cause the problems that get reported.
>  It's fairly uncommon for us to change drivers other than perhaps the
>  occasional compile fix which usually goes upstream quickly.  Yet that's
>  by far where most of the bugs that get reported are against.
>  
>  Pretty much every time someone who files a Fedora kernel bug who then
>  builds their own vanilla kernel and it 'works', it's because they
>  chose different CONFIG options rather than the fact that it's vanilla.
>   
I think the best solution short-term is to try and get as much
into the -stable kernel as possible. That way most distro kernels
automatically become more similar.

[Hans de Goede]

Dave Jones wrote:
>  On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 07:50:55PM +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
>  
>   > And maybe also a common bugzilla?
>  
>  http://bugme.osdl.org :-)
>   
Would it be an idea to automaticly (cron job, whatever) forward kernel bugs 
there and to add tracking of the upstream bug to the Fedora bug?

I know there are some pretty talented bugzilla xml-rpc hackers in FE, maybe 
they can script this up?

Regards,

Hans

[Dave Jones]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 08:36:47PM +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
>  Dave Jones wrote:
>  > On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 07:50:55PM +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
>  > 
>  >  > And maybe also a common bugzilla?
>  > 
>  > http://bugme.osdl.org :-)
>  > 
>  
>  Would it be an idea to automaticly (cron job, whatever) forward kernel bugs 
>  there and to add tracking of the upstream bug to the Fedora bug?
>  
>  I know there are some pretty talented bugzilla xml-rpc hackers in FE, maybe 
>  they can script this up? 
I'd love to have a tool which would slurp bugdata out of our bz and
allow me to edit it if necessary, and then push a submit upstream button.

The differences in schema between the two db's mean that either a thunking
layer would be needed, or in some cases, manual intervention (which is why
I'd want to be able to edit the submission).

	Dave

-- 
http://www.codemonkey.org.uk

[Roland McGrath]

>  I'd love to have a tool which would slurp bugdata out of our bz
> and
>  allow me to edit it if necessary, and then push a submit upstream button. 
dkl is long on notice of how snazzy this would be, for sourceware bugzilla,
gnome bugzilla, etc, etc.  It was always "after bugzilla infrastructure
upgrades, blah, blah, far in the future" before.  Maybe the future is
sooner now.

[Dave Jones]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 01:24:44PM -0700, Roland McGrath wrote:
>  > I'd love to have a tool which would slurp bugdata out of our
> bz and
>  > allow me to edit it if necessary, and then push a submit upstream button.
>  
>  dkl is long on notice of how snazzy this would be, for sourceware bugzilla,
>  gnome bugzilla, etc, etc.  It was always "after bugzilla infrastructure
>  upgrades, blah, blah, far in the future" before.  Maybe the future is
>  sooner now. 
Also, I miss bugzuki. That thing had promise.

	Dave

-- 
http://www.codemonkey.org.uk

[Josh Boyer]

On Thu, 2007-03-29 at 20:36 +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
>  Dave Jones wrote:
>  > On Thu, Mar 29, 2007 at 07:50:55PM +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
>  > 
>  >  > And maybe also a common bugzilla?
>  > 
>  > http://bugme.osdl.org :-)
>  > 
>  
>  Would it be an idea to automaticly (cron job, whatever) forward kernel bugs 
>  there and to add tracking of the upstream bug to the Fedora bug? 
Automatically, no.  If there was a button or lever to muck with in
bugzilla to do it once the bug had been found to actually be valid that
might be worthwhile.

Automatically mirroring bugs to kernel.org that turned out to be caused
by someone using binary drivers would not be a good thing :).

josh