Kernel Log: Linus resolves to apply a strict policy over merging changes
For years, major changes for each new Linux kernel version have been merged into the main development tree during the merge window, which usually lasts about two weeks and concludes with the release of the first pre-release version of the next kernel (2.6.x-rc1). Thereafter, changes are theoretically restricted to patches which fix existing bugs without giving rise to new ones. In practice, RC2 and RC3 have included the odd major change and some clean up work, such as resolving compiler warnings, has found its way in at an even later stage.
This was certainly the case for kernel version 2.6.35, the second pre-release version included a number of changes which were anything but negligible. However, on releasing that version, Torvalds hinted that from now on he would only accept changes which resolved bugs. Various emails from Torvalds on LKML over the following days, in which he firmly rejected a number of git pull requests and asked subsystem maintainers to submit only bug fixes, show that he means this to be taken seriously (e. g. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). Even some minor, supposedly risk-free clean up work has been rejected.
One reason for this change of approach appears to be a bug in RC2 caused by an apparently innocuous change which resulted in TTY subsystem code overwriting memory pages used by other kernel code –
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