RFC: Stable kernel updates and the SRU process

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 01:01:00AM +0000, Henrik Nilsen Omma wrote:
> I generally support the proposed change provided that the SRU process be  
> replaced with another rigorous QA process. It should focus on regression  
> testing and broad hardware coverage.
>
> We can definitely run automated tests across the hardware in our labs,  
> but I would appreciate some help from the kernel team in extending our  
> test suite for this. We currently run a fairly basic set of tests to  
> boot, install and check for basic HW support. We are also equiped to run  
> 3rd party suites like autotest and ltp but we don't have the right  
> post-processing set up for these. I think we should cherry-pick a  
> selection of tests from these suites to run on each kernel version 
> upgrade.

I think you could probably get a lot of mileage out of a test suite which
was focused on trying to identify regressions, rather than verify
functionality.

For example, it could confirm that the devices were still bound to the same
drivers, that there were no unexpected changes to dmesg output, that all of
the same devices are detected, etc.

-- 
 - mdz