Kernel release status [LWN.net]

The current development kernel is still 2.6.0-test5, which was released back on September 8.

The pile of patches in Linus's BitKeeper repository continues to grow. The most notable change is probably the dev_t expansion (see below); other patches which have been merged include a device mapper update, some NFS updates, a big I2C update, Con Kolivas's and Ingo Molnar's scheduler interactivity patches, a Coda filesystem update, some initramfs tweaks, improvements in random driver locking, the removal of some ext3 debugging hooks, direct I/O support for reiserfs, some CPU frequency work, an Intel SpeedStep-SMI driver, a substantial amount of janitorial work, and various fixes.

The current stable kernel is 2.4.22. Marcelo continues to work on 2.4.23; he released 2.4.23-pre5 on September 21. This prepatch adds some ACPI fixes, an omitted piece of the VM patch set that went into -pre4, and various other fixes.

It remains a relatively slow period in kernel development, so this is not the longest LWN Kernel Page we have ever produced. It was hard, but we have resisted the urge to fill it out with coverage of the latest BitKeeper flame war.

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Slow period?

Posted Sep 25, 2003 13:30 UTC (Thu) by alspnost (subscriber, #2763) [Link]

Blimey - just look at all the interesting stuff going into the latest 2.6-test kernel. You call that a slow period? ;-)

I see your point though - I guess it will remain "slow" until 2.7 branches.

BitKeeper

Posted Sep 25, 2003 21:56 UTC (Thu) by freethinker (guest, #4397) [Link]

Wouldn't it be nice if someone developed a free revision control system that did everything BK does, better if possible, and maybe one or two things that people want and that BK doesn't do? Think of all the energy that would go into kernel development instead of flamewars! Surely I'm not the first to think of this. I hope it doesn't have to wait until I'm able to do it, that will be a while...

BitKeeper

Posted Sep 25, 2003 22:59 UTC (Thu) by Soruk (subscriber, #2722) [Link]

Judging from what I could glean from that flamewar, if you've accepted the licence to use BK the licence forbids you from developing in the area of source code control.

This is going to make it very difficult for someone to write something which has similar capabilities and more, if they have no experience with what they are trying to mimic/replicate and are working from little more than a wish list.

BitKeeper

Posted Sep 28, 2003 15:42 UTC (Sun) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link]

if you've accepted the licence to use BK the licence forbids you from developing in the area of source code control.

Not quite. It means, if you use BK, then decide to start hacking on some other version control system, then your free BK license is revoked. At that point you have two choices: give up BK, or pay for a license.

So - you could sit and use BK for a month, or a year, or however long it takes you to learn all about its features and something of how they are implemented.....

...then stop using BK, and go hack on your favorite alternative system, using what you have learned. But at that point you can't go back - unless of course you are willing to pay for a commercial BK license.

Flamewars

Posted Sep 26, 2003 18:53 UTC (Fri) by RobDavies (guest, #9930) [Link]

Aw come on, they'd be flamewars raging on some other topic, if Bitkeeper
wasn't used. Actually that BitKeeper one was fairly mild, I thought, more
a few sparks than real flaming.

Remember the pre-BK Flaming on the patch penguin, and the spats over CML2
and Python?