Linus Torvalds is back at his explosively scatological best in some recent comments about a Linux 6.15-rc1 pull request (h/t Phoronix). The target of the Linux creator and lead developer’s ire was “the disgusting ‘hdrtest’ crap,” which he accused of slowing down software builds and leaving “random ‘hdrtest’ turds around.” Torvald’s full post concerning the hdrtest issue registered a six on the turd-o-meter.
While Torvalds was disturbed by the code that was impacting the latest Linux kernel, beginning his post with a “Grr,” he remained precise in his objections to it. “I did the pull, resolved the (trivial) conflicts, but I notice that this ended up containing the disgusting ‘hdrtest’ crap that (a) slows down the build because it’s done for a regular allmodconfig build rather than be some simple thing that you guys can run as needed (b) also leaves random ‘hdrtest’ turds around in the include directories,” he wrote.
“This thing needs to *die*”
Torvalds went on to state that he had previously complained about this issue, and inquired why the hdr testing is being done as a regular part of the build. Moreover, he highlighted that the resulting ‘turds’ were breaking filename completion. Torvalds underlined this point – and his disgust – by stating, “this thing needs to *die*.”
In a shot of advice to fellow Linux developers, Toralds said, “If you want to do that hdrtest thing, do it as part of your *own* checks. Don’t make everybody else see that disgusting thing and have those turds in their trees.” He then noted that he had decided to mark hdrtest as broken for now, to prevent its inclusion in regular builds.
So, what is ‘hdrtest’ and why has it brought Torvalds’ frustration levels to boiling point? According to Phoronix, the Linux developer team has recently merged a large collection of open-source graphics card driver updates. Alongside this is ‘hdrtest’ code for the Intel Xe kernel driver, which includes code to test DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) header files.
To avoid any confusion, DRM in this instance isn’t Digital Rights Management it refers to the Direct Rendering Manager. On a similar note, hdrtest isn’t anything to do with High Dynamic Range (HDR) graphics, but is used by devs for verifying the integrity and self-containment of DRM header files.