Kernel release - new development model?

Kernel release - new development model?

Posted this under the MODULE_PARAM section further down. Perhaps should have posted it here first...

This also relates to the other articles as part of the Linux kernel page. It seems to me that the kernel development model is morphing into an Andrew development/unstable kernel and a Linus stable kernel.

I guess, given the complexity of the kernel these days, that breaking off into a development series and then bringing it back to a stable series is getting to be harder and harder.

With a larger and more diverse code base is it perhaps, with small sections of development are going into Andrew's tree and stabilising and then being merged into the stable series, that a newer kernel development model is being forged now? This gets more up-to-date features out to users faster than the old cycle. For example, I'll bet that there was more code went into the 2.6.8 to 2.6.9 than went into the entire 1.1 or 1.3 trees? Yet this only waranted a dot.dot release now.

Is it time to do some conceptual blockbusting on the old development model, and not to expect a 2.7 series. Rather should we expect more and more development to go on in and upstream of the -mm trees, subsequently merged into mainline?

What then of version numbers? Should we consider the -mm to be the equivalent of a 2.7 series? Then 2.6.10 would be the equivalent of the 2.8 or 3.0? Perhaps, with the current model, a slight expansion of what actually gets into the -mm tree in terms of more radical development (such as Ingo's RT patches) get us back into the development vs stable series of old but in much more manageable sizes and keeps patch pressure down on the stable series, as it moves into each dot.dot release more quickly.

It seems/feels to me that 2.6 has evolved in small steps into something more like 2.8 without the big step change. Distributions seem to have an easier time of shipping dot.dot releases more regularly, and being much more up-to-date while they do it. It also gets many more users USING the latest releases which can only help code development.....

Trevor Jasper