The 2.4 stable kernel tree has been maintained by Willy Tarreau for a year, since July of 2006 [story]. When recently asked if the tree had been abandoned, Willy replied, "no it's not abandoned at all! The difficulty with 2.4 is to get user feedback on patches. While in 2.6, there are hundreds or thousands of testers for every release, in 2.4, I have to wait longer after every release in order to start collecting problem reports, or confirmation of fixes. People using it in production generally cannot reboot a machine in the evening just to try a patch. Also, subsystem maintainers have less time to spend on it and are themselves slowed down by the slow feedback process."
As to the upcoming 2.4.35 kernel, Willy noted, "I still have a few patches to merge, and I expect to be able to work on them next week-end, then release -rc1, which I expect to be the only -rc before -final (which will probably not be true as in every -rc)."
From: Tony Borras [email blocked] To: linux-kernel Subject: Linux 2.4.35 tree abandoned/delayed? Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 16:30:47 -0800 I did get the current 'pre' set of 2.4.35 (circa early June) patches and applied to 2.4.34.5. After fixing a goto mislable in one of the patches (dont remember if it was one of the patch-2.4.34.? or patch-2.4.35.pre5), managed to build a vmlinuz-2.4.35 successfully. Just wondered whether to expect an abandonded tree, in which case I will fly with this 2.4.35 build or should wait for its eventual release. Thanks Greg! Tony Borras There are 10 types of people in this world, those that read binary and those who don't! -- __ __ _ I N C. http://www.sysdev.org / __|\\// __|| \ __ __ / [email blocked] \__ \ \/\__ \||)|/ O_)\/ / \/ System Tools / Utilities |___/ || ___/|_ /\___|\_/ WIntel / Linux Device Drivers
From: Willy Tarreau [email blocked] To: Tony Borras [email blocked] Subject: Re: Linux 2.4.35 tree abandoned/delayed? Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 07:16:48 +0200 Hi Tony, On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 04:30:47PM -0800, Tony Borras wrote: > I did get the current 'pre' set of 2.4.35 (circa early > June) patches and applied to 2.4.34.5. After fixing a goto > mislable in one of the patches (dont remember if it was one of > the patch-2.4.34.? or patch-2.4.35.pre5), managed to build a > vmlinuz-2.4.35 successfully. could you please report what the problem was, in case it's not fixed yet ? > Just wondered whether to expect an abandonded tree, in which > case I will fly with this 2.4.35 build or should wait for its > eventual release. No it's not abandonned at all !!! The difficulty with 2.4 is to get user feedback on patches. While in 2.6, there are hundreds or thousands of testers for every release, in 2.4, I have to wait longer after every release in order to start collecting problem reports, or confirmation of fixes. People using it in production generally cannot reboot a machine in the evening just to try a patch. Also, subsystem maintainers have less time to spend on it and are themselves slowed down by the slow feedback process. That's merely why I maintain a parallel 2.4.34.X stable branch. I thought I could release one version every 6 months, but I think that this delay will probably slightly increase after 2.4.35, we'll see. I still have a few patches to merge, and I expect to be able to work on them next week-end, then release -rc1, which I expect to be the only -rc before -final (which will probably not be true as in every -rc). Thanks, Willy
