http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf The state of the kernel Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:12:43 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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 ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2010/02/23/built-to-last/ Linus has released the 2.6.33-rc1 prepatch, closing the merge window for this development cycle. This kernel has a few features which will shake things up, with dynamic tracing being near the top as far as I am concerned. But, perhaps, the most interesting addition is one that almost ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2009/12/23/nouveau-a-2633-surprise/ So I've just returned from Tokyo, where I attended the 2009 Kernel Summit and the first ever Japan Linux Symposium. My body clock is expected sometime later this week. It was a tiring but rewarding week, and not just because the sushi was so good. The Kernel Summit went ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2009/10/26/a-tokyo-travelogue/ So I am hitting the road next week. It should be no surprise that LinuxCon and the Linux Plumbers Conference are coming up. I have a talk (the well-travelled Kernel Report) and the kernel developers' panel, both on Monday; I fully expect to be tired by the end. ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2009/09/17/traveling-in-real-time/ After a development cycle lasting exactly three months (June 9 to September 9), Linus Torvalds has released the 2.6.31 kernel. This cycle saw the inclusion of almost 11,000 different changes from over 1100 individual developers representing some 200 companies; a minimum of 16% of the changes came form developers ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2009/09/10/2631-is-out/ Sharp-eyed observers may have noticed a slightly unusual patch which was merged into the mainline kernel on March 17. It's a new mascot for the kernel; among other things, this image is shown at boot time for a number of configurations. For many a year, the mascot has ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2009/03/19/the-kernel-gets-a-new-mascot/ On January 10, Linus Torvalds released the 2.6.29-rc1 prepatch and closed the merge window for the 2.6.29 release. At some 8800 changesets (so far), 2.6.29 looks to be a large development cycle. That said, this kernel cycle will have a relatively small list of exciting new features for ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2009/01/11/looking-forward-to-2629/ The 2.6.28-rc8 kernel prepatch is out. That means that the final 2.6.28 release must be getting close. I once heard Linus say that he would never hold a kernel release past -rc9 regardless of the situation; there comes a point where you have to send it out into ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2008/12/12/when-to-release-2628/ Linus Torvalds released 2.6.28-rc1 and closed the merge window on October 23. So we can now see what will be in the 2.6.28 kernel. Once again, it looks like an active development cycle with a lot of new stuff for Linux users. Memory management patches are notorious for taking ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2008/10/24/2628-takes-shape/ The agenda for the 2008 kernel summit has been posted. The summit is an annual, invitation-only event which is typically attended by 70-80 developers. It is a rare opportunity to bring part of the kernel community together for focused discussions on topics which affect the kernel as a ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2008/09/12/the-2008-kernel-summit/ On July 28, Linus Torvalds released the 2.6.27-rc1 prepatch and closed the merge window for 2.6.27. That means we now know what will be in this kernel, which will probably be released sometime in October. Recent cycles have featured a lot of internal cleanup and relatively few new ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2008/07/29/the-2627-merge-window-closes/ Linus Torvalds released the 2.6.26 kernel on July 13 - somewhat later than most people had expected. At a full three months, this development cycle took longer than some others; that is especially surprising given that the number of patches merged and new features added is somewhat less than ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2008/07/14/2626-at-last/ I fell a little behind on the weather forecast pages, sorry for that. I plead that I was vacationing with the in-laws and would have gotten into serious trouble had I gone too near a keyboard. Anyway, things are caught up now. The current prepatch is 2.6.26-rc8; when he ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2008/06/27/2626-almost-there/ On May 3, Linus announced the release of the 2.6.26-rc1 prepatch and the closure of the merge window for this development cycle. So now we know what will be in 2.6.26, which, I predict, will be released sometime around the beginning of July. Many developers will be pleased by ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2008/05/05/the-shape-of-2626/ The 2.6.25 kernel has been released at last by Linus Torvalds. The plan had been to get it out a week or so ago, but a couple of stubborn problems prevented that. A marathon debugging session by Ingo Molnar turned up the last show-stopper on April 15, and ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2008/04/17/2625-is-out/ I got around to updating the forecast pages for the 2.6.25-rc8 prepatch. At this point things are getting close. My guess is that there will be one more prepatch (-rc9) sometime in the near future and the final 2.6.25 release sometime around the U.S. tax day festivities. ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2008/04/04/2625-getting-closer-and-ubifs/ The weather forecast pages are quite kernel centric - that's the area I know best. There is a user-space page, though, featuring a few important components. Many of those have been revised in recent times: The long-awaited KDE 4.0 release happened in January. This major update of ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2008/03/13/ah-yes-user-space/ After updating the current conditions to reflect 2.6.25-rc4, I went into the security page and added some introductory text; I'll probably do this with the other pages as well over time. Security has been on my mind as a result of the somewhat embarrassing vmsplice() exploit. This vulnerability has ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2008/03/06/security-stuff/ The 2.6.25-rc1 prepatch was released on February 10. The -rc1 release, of course, indicates the closing of the merge window and the beginning of the stabilization period for this cycle. So I've updated all of the weather forecast pages to reflect what went in and what didn't, and ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2008/02/14/the-2625-cycle-settles-in/ As I predicted, Linus released 2.6.24 just before heading off to linux.conf.au in Melbourne. He's slipping, though: usually he waits until I've gotten on a plane and can't update web sites before shoving a release out the door. I'm still here, though, so the main Weather Forecast page ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2008/01/24/2624-is-out/ We're still waiting for the 2.6.24 release, which seems likely to come out near the end of the month - just before linux.conf.au. While waiting, I've gone through and made a large number of small updates throughout the forecast pages. The development kernel is at 2.6.24-rc8 - probably ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2008/01/17/cleaning-up-after-the-holidays/ This is a relatively slow time of year for kernel development (not too surprisingly), so there have not been a great many updates to the forecast pages. Expect things to pick up in January. Meanwhile, I did catch up to the 2.6.24-rc6 release. And yes, speaking of January... my ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2007/12/24/cleaning-up-before-the-holidays/ Linus took almost three weeks to get 2.6.24-rc4 out - the 2.6.24 process has, in general, been quite slow-moving this way. Normal practice is to try to get -rc releases out once per week. It only took me two days to update the corresponding forecast page, so I ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2007/12/05/2624-rc4-at-last/ Time for a few basic updates, starting with a somewhat belated acknowledgment that 2.6.24-rc2 is out. Now that I've caught up, expect Linus to release -rc3 just about any time. PID namespaces continue to present complicated issues - it's hard to present a coherent view of the system while simultaneously ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2007/11/12/rc2-pid-namespaces-and-ttm/ The first 2.6.24 prepatch is out, signaling the closing of the merge window. So I have gone and tweaked things all over the Weather Forecast pages to match the new reality. The summary on the main page now shows the highlights of 2.6.24, and various other entries have ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2007/10/25/catching-up-to-2624/ The new GNOME development timeline is up; it predicts a GNOME 2.22 release on March 12. The GNOME entry has been updated accordingly. The x86 merger has happened, so the miscellaneous topics page has been updated accordingly. While I was at it, I added an entry on KGDB - ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2007/10/18/small-updates/ The user space page has been tweaked to reflect Tuesday's release of of gcc 4.2.2. This is a minor release containing mostly bug fixes; nothing all that exciting to report. http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2007/10/11/gcc-422/ SMACK is a simplified mandatory access control module for Linux. It seems likely at this point that SMACK will have the honor of being the first such module to join SELinux in the mainline kernel. So I added an entry on the security page about it. http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2007/10/08/smack/ A number of people remarked that the Linux Platform Weather Forecast had become rather too large to read comfortably on a single page. So I've split it up into several sub-sections. Most of the content is the same, though there are a couple of exceptions: I wrote the ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2007/10/08/the-forecast-page-has-been-split-up/ The "final -rc release" for 2.6.23 wasn't, so point to -rc8. Added an entry on credential records. Added an entry on FS-Cache. http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2007/09/27/september-27-updates/ A few tweaks today: The current prepatch is 2.6.23-rc7 I changed the forecasts for 2.6.24 a bit; this is beginning to come a little more into focus as the merge window gets closer. Noted the timerfd() difficulties Made the timeframe for syslets more pessimistic. Added another article reference to the ... http://linux-foundation.org/weblogs/lwf/2007/09/24/updates-for-september-24/