Kernel release status [LWN.net]

The current 2.6 prepatch is 2.6.20-rc1, released by Linus just after LWN came out on December 13. See the short-form changelog for a (long) list of patches merged for 2.6.20.

Several dozen patches (a relatively small number) have been merged into the mainline git repository since -rc1 came out.

The current -mm tree is 2.6.20-rc1-mm1. Recent changes to -mm include a new version of the user-space device driver feature, an idle notification facility for x86-64, the lumpy reclaim patch, and a new version of the dynamic tick patch.

For older kernels: 2.6.18.6 was released on December 18; it contains a fair number of fixes (including one which is security-related).

Adrian Bunk has released 2.6.16.36 with several patches and 2.6.16.37-rc1 with a few dozen more.

Willy Tarreau has been busy, having released 2.4.33.5 (two security patches), 2.4.33.6 (one more), and 2.4.34-rc3 (perhaps the last before the 2.4.34 final release).

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Kernel release status

Posted Dec 21, 2006 7:52 UTC (Thu) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link]

Kernel 2.6.16.37-rc1 ?
Why are RCs required for the stable kernels ?
Do we need five-part version numbers now ?

Alex

Kernel release status

Posted Dec 23, 2006 4:45 UTC (Sat) by fergal (subscriber, #602) [Link]

Stable kernels need RCs more than unstable. Releasing a broken unstable is nothing remarkable, another release will be along real soon to fix it. Releasing a broken stable is worse. People start to lose trust in the stability. BTW for this use, "broken" means an existing feature was broken by one of the changes you made in this release, it doesn't not mean bug free.

5 numbers does seem a bit extreme but that's what happens when your dev branch has 3 numbers.