Built to last

"It has now been almost exactly five years since kernel development community tentatively started using the git source code management system with the 2.6.12-rc2 commit. That was an uncertain time; nobody really knew how long it would take the development process to get back up to speed after an abrupt core-tool change. As it turned out, git was almost immediately useful, and has only become more so since. Making the development process work is git’s main claim to fame, but, as a side benefit, git also makes it possible to learn a lot about how our kernel is developed. And that, as it turns out, includes taking a look at the code which is not changed.

"The speed of the development process is impressive; the nearly-released 2.6.33 kernel is the product of nearly 11,000 individual changes affecting nearly a million lines of code (look here for more 2.6.33 statistics). Those numbers are boringly normal for a three-month development cycle; things are always moving that fast."

Complete Story

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