From owner-cvs-all  Fri Oct  6  7:41:18 2000
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From: Justin Gibbs <gibbs@plutotech.com>
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Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/dev/aic7xxx aic7xxx.c aic7xxx_freebsd.c
In-Reply-To: <3394.970805416@winston.osd.bsdi.com> from Jordan Hubbard at "Oct 5, 2000  9:10:16 pm"
To: jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com (Jordan Hubbard)
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2000 08:41:08 -0600 (MDT)
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	cvs-all@FreeBSD.org
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> This is sort of why I'd really be happier if you held back a bit on
> MFCs in the future - the commit to current and then -stable
> immediately after it was probably not all that prudent.  Thanks.
> 
> - Jordan

This is another instance where you've drawn poor assumptions.  The
bug actually was introduced to -stable on Sept 16th. after a MFC that
occurred after code was in -current for some time.  Unfortunately, 
SMPNG and the disabling of spls() masked the problem and no amount
of time in current would have shown it up.  When I became aware of
the issue, I corrected it in -current and immediately merged it
back to -stable because it was a necessary bug fix.  Unforunately I
took patches from the wrong source tree so only half of the fix
was effected with the first commit.

Would any amount of review by a third party have found this problem?
Probably not.  I found it by inspection before any reports of failure
from -stable but only because I am still actively working on the code.

I have been reading the discussions on how to deal with -stable with
some interest, but so far I think most comments miss an important
point.  So long as -current and -stable are different, any MFC
will contain some risk.  This will mean temporary but inevitable
short term instability in -stable as we strive to improve its quality.
The only way to improve -stable releases in my mind is to more proactively
plan when those releases will occur and provide similar shakeout and
beta peroids to releases made off of the mainline.  For those tracking
-stable, they should take their decission to sync to any change with
caution, because no change is risk free.

--
Justin


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