Re:Ask HN: Why the Linux Kernel doesn't have unit tests?
by carlhjerpe on Friday November 25, 2022 @11:00AM
(#33743581)
If you have 100000 servers it's in your interest to test HEAD on 100 of them to be able to catch and bugs before they hit a release. That's how open-source should work!
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Re:Ask HN: Why the Linux Kernel doesn't have unit tests?
by Cyph0n on Friday November 25, 2022 @11:23AM
(#33743872)
Why not run 1-2 releases behind and test/qualify a later release?
A commenter below gave a good example of a company that would need to run a bleeding edge kernel (Red Hat). The vast majority of companies would never need to do that though.
Re:Ask HN: Why the Linux Kernel doesn't have unit tests?
by fiedzia on Friday November 25, 2022 @12:01PM
(#33744373)
> Why not run 1-2 releases behind and test/qualify a later release?
This may work for most people, but not all. It's easier to get things fixed while developers still work on something, than weeks/months later. Also if you have not most-popular hardware/software configuration, testing done by others isn't necessarily sufficient for you.
Re:Ask HN: Why the Linux Kernel doesn't have unit tests?
by sph on Friday November 25, 2022 @12:01PM
(#33744393)
Maybe your company needs that super duper new feature that's on master. Or you're Google scale and that 0.5% improvement in IO throughput would save you millions a year. You wouldn't want to wait until it hits the stable branch if possible.