Kernel development [LWN.net]

Brief items

Kernel release status

The current stable 2.6 kernel is 2.6.12.3, which was announced on July 15.

The current 2.6 prepatch remains 2.6.13-rc3; a small number of fixes have accumulated in Linus's git repository since -rc3 came out. Since Linus and many key developers are in Ottawa for the kernel summit (see below) and the Ottawa Linux Symposium, activity has been relatively subdued.

The current -mm kernel is 2.6.13-rc3-mm1. Recent changes to -mm include the addition of the class-based kernel resource management (CKRM) patches, a number of fixes, and a set of patches marked "Futz with header files, waste much time."

Since your editor is in Ottawa as well, the Kernel Page will be relatively small this week. It will return to normal next week. Meanwhile, the slides from the "2.6 Kernel Roadmap" OLS talk have been posted for the curious.

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Kernel development news

Quote of the week

Jiffies are here to stay, and they are here to stay for some very very fundamental reasons. If you hear somebody arguing for removing jiffies, you should piss in their general direction, and realize that they don't know what they are talking about.

-- Linus Torvalds

Comments (3 posted)

The 2005 Linux Kernel Developers' Summit

The 2005 version of the invitation-only Linux Kernel Developers' Summit was held on July 18 and 19 in Ottawa. The following are LWN editor Jonathan Corbet's notes from the discussion.

July 18 sessions:

The processor panel, being a discussion between the kernel developers and processor architects from AMD, IBM, and Intel.
I/O Buses, and I/O memory management units in particular.
Virtual memory topics, including fragmentation, response to memory pressure, and scalability.
ExecShield; Red Hat's security patches which have only partially been merged into the mainline.
Virtualization, and how the kernel can better support it.
The virtual filesystem, and various topics related to the VFS.

July 19 (Tuesday) sessions:

The hardware vendors' panel, on the impedance mismatch between the kernel development community and manufacturers.
Report from the networking summit which was held before the kernel event.
The convergence of storage and network paths; how do you ensure safe operation when distinction between the networking and block subsystems blurs?
Clustering: a brief report from the clustering summit held two weeks before in Germany.
RAS tools, being mostly a discussion of the recently merged kexec and kdump capabilities.
Realtime capabilities, a look at the various proposals for implementing realtime response with Linux.
The kernel and the Linux desktop; a report from the Desktop Developers' Conference.
A report from the power management summit, contributed by Pat Mochel. Pat also led the session at the Kernel Summit on power management. The one thing that session added which is not in Pat's report: Linus took the power management developers to task for focusing on suspend-to-disk capabilities, when, he says, what everybody wants is suspend-to-RAM. The latter is complicated, however, by the usual video adapter difficulties.
The kernel development process, with an emphasis on how the community could produce kernels with fewer bugs.