
Torvalds: I've pulled this, but if problems, ext4 is going on my shit-list - torvald
https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/8/6/219
======
tytso
I'll admit the pull request was a little marginal for patches that would be
landing in -rc4, which is roughly halfway through the development cycle. That
being said, all of the patches got independent review (none of them were
authored by me, and I reviewed them all before accepting them). I also ran the
tests through a very extensive regression test suite. ([https://thunk.org/gce-
xfstests](https://thunk.org/gce-xfstests)). So even though many of the commits
landed very recently, in my experience testing catches many more problems than
end user testing in linux-next, because not that many people run linux-next.

Granted, I certainly wouldn't have sent this pull request any later. After rc4
the only thing I would send are regression fixes, and at most one commit in
this pull request could be considered a regression fixes. The last commit
listed in the short log "make xattr inode reads faster" optimizes a new
feature (large xattr support) that only landed in this merge window. So it's
not going to have many users, and I figured it was safe.

Cleanups have always been in the grey area. I certainly wouldn't have any
hesitation sending these cleanups a week or two earlier. None of them were
terribly large by themselves, although as a whole it's a somewhat large merge
request for at this point in the cycle:

13 files changed, 290 insertions(+), 196 deletions(-)

If I screwed up, and missed a bug in my code review, and it wasn't picked up
in the testing, ultimately I'm the one that's going to be held accountable.
Which presumably means that Linus isn't going to be trust me in the future
when I send in another marginal pull request.

In the past, when I was ultra-conservative and wouldn't send any of these
fixes until the merge window, Greg K-H would sometimes grump at me because it
would delay the fixes getting to stable kernel, and it would also contribute
towards making his workload more "lumpy". What I would have done after -rc4
(and perhaps what I should have done for -rc4) is to only push those fixes
that were cc'ed to stable@vger.kernel.org or were specifically regression
fixes.

Bottom line: I did realize that what I was sending to Linus was pushing the
boundaries a bit. And Linus was making sure that I knew that.

~~~
binaryapparatus
Huge respect for both! Shows over and over again how clear communication beats
political correctness every time.

~~~
theedwood
It is not, however, an excuse to dismiss politically correct ways of clearly
communicating.

------
taeric
This seems a prime example of Linus being a pretty awesome maintainer. Blunt,
but really just honest on messaging.

Or was I supposed to read this differently?

~~~
wolph
If he's not convinced he shouldn't have pulled imho. Reply like this before
pulling and see what they reply

~~~
taeric
That would make sense on a new maintainer. Source of these is a well trusted
dev.

I don't know, as I am an outsider, but messaging like this is as important for
the crowd as it is for the directly involved.

------
odammit
Every post I see on HM about Linus is about how cool it is that LT is an
asshole.

What's with the skewed asshole-bias? Same people will bitch about "asshole
people" on there own teams that are tough on PRs.

~~~
throw2016
Linus is not an asshole and no one thinks assholes are 'cool'. This comes
across as a distorted framing of the issue to fit a preconceived bias.

There are millions of lkml posts that don't get posted here, only the ones
where Linus has to tick someone off or express a disagreement, usually posted
with zero context or history.

If your impression of Linus is based solely on posts that make it to HN you
have a lot of catching up to do.

~~~
odammit
Also plenty of people think assholes are cool, otherwise Dan Bilzerian would
be a janitor.

~~~
throw2016
Obviously assholes would find other assholes 'cool'. It's self defining.

------
lorey
Could someone please give some context on this?

~~~
jonathonf
Ted Ts'o (extremely well-known developer) being warned by Linus Torvalds
(extremely well-known developer) about a Git pull request that has a
misleading commit message.

Edit: correct spelling of Ts'o. :S

~~~
loeg
Arguably misleading. All of those commit lines except the very last look like
bugfixes or cleanup to me.

I think it's a reasonable 1-sentence summary.

------
moron4hire
It always cracks me up how Torvald's "necessary, blunt honesty" is so
frequently more verbose than a neutral, not-rude answer would have been.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
I don't see the s word or any cuss words as being necessary. Short and blunt
is just fine.

------
achtung666
BREAKING NEWS: Linus used word "shit" on email message.

Geez, srsly...

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mmel
This is not noteworthy.

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sexydefinesher
St Ignucius bless his heart

