Along with more reviewers, improving Linux's
development workflow is critical to expanding everyone's ability to contribute. Linux's "email only" workflow is
showing its age, but the upstream development of more automated
patch tracking,
continuous integration,
fuzzing,
coverage, and
testing will make the development process significantly more efficient.
Additionally, instead of testing kernels after they're released, it's more effective to test during development. When tests are performed against unreleased kernel versions (e.g.
linux-next) and
reported upstream, developers get immediate feedback about bugs. Fixes can be developed before a flaw is ever actually released; it's always easier to
fix a bug earlier than later.
This "
upstream first" approach to product kernel development and testing is extremely efficient. Google has been successfully doing this with
Chrome OS and
Android for a while now, and is hardly alone in the industry. It means feature development happens against the latest kernel, and devices are similarly tested as close as possible to the latest upstream kernels, all avoiding duplicated "in-house" effort.
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