Collaborative development of the Linux Kernel

[Charles Pegge]

Interview:

http://howsoftwareisbuilt.com/2009/11/18/interview-with-greg-kroah-hartman-linux-kernel-devmaintainer/

Also how new Drivers are continuously integrated into the Kernel.

[Lionheart008]

hi charles, very interesting interview. Although I am a linux alien, I like linus and his os. there is a large amount of people they are influenced for developing Linux (suse) day by day, that's really great! the main developer team like "greg" says:
"We change something like 5,000 lines a day", that's horrible, isn't it ?

I show here a part of the interview for discussion:

"Interview with Greg Kroah-Hartman – Linux Kernel Dev/Maintainer"



...
"Greg: I’ve been tracking this for over five years now, and we’ve gotten a lot better. There are a lot more people doing the work.
To give an example, for the 2.5 to 2.6 kernel development series, which took about two years, the top 30 people did 80 percent of the work. Now, the top 30 people do 30 percent of the work. The sheer number of developers has also increased. We were running a couple hundred developers, and now we’re running a couple thousand.
Greg: That’s the percentage. Like I said, everything’s in the kernel itself. We’re at something like six or seven million lines of code, and over 50 percent of those lines of code are drivers.
...
I think 30 percent is architecture-specific stuff, for things like processors and networking. The core kernel is like five percent of the overall code. Those numbers have stayed pretty much the same over the past four or five years.
We change something like 5,000 lines a day, which is just scary. Fifty percent of that change will be in the drivers, and five percent will be in the core kernel. In other words, the kernel is being modified everywhere at that rate of change. "

...

Greg: First, people need to realize that our driver model is different than other operating systems, because all our drivers ship with the kernel. The license requires our drivers to be open, so everything is in the main kernel tree.
Because of our huge rate of change, they pretty much have to be in the kernel tree. Otherwise, keeping a driver outside the kernel is technically a very difficult thing to do, because our internal kernel APIs change very, very rapidly.
...


it's allowed I am thinking to show the source for editor purpose and discussion ;)

best regards, Frank

[ErosOlmi]

Frank,

can you please check if you can post pieces of the interview here? I'm not sure you can post due to copyright note present in referred page.

Thanks
Eros

[Charles Pegge]

Hi Eros,

I think we are completely safe with an attributed quote here, especially as it promotes reading of the original article.

But if there is any doubt, London is the litigation capital of the world, allegedly. :diablo: :)
http://blogs.findlaw.com/solicitor/2009/09/london-libel-capital-of-the-world.html


Charles