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Development statistics for 2.6.31

By Jonathan Corbet
August 26, 2009
The Linux Foundation recently announced the release of an updated version of its kernel authorship report, co-written by LWN editor Jonathan Corbet. The information there is interesting, but, since it stops with the 2.6.30 kernel, it also is ancient history at this point. 2.6.30 came out two full months ago, after all. LWN readers, certainly, are used to more current information. Since 2.6.31 is getting close to ready, it seems like the right time to look at this development cycle and see where the code came from.

As of this writing (just after the release of 2.6.31-rc7), the 2.6.31 development cycle had seen the incorporation of 10,663 non-merge changesets from 1,146 individual developers. These patches added almost 903,000 lines of code and removed just over 494,000 lines, for a net growth of just over 408,000 lines. According to Rafael Wysocki's August 25 report, this work introduced 108 regressions into the kernel, 26 of which still lack a resolution.

The largest individual contributors in the 2.6.31 development cycle were:

Most active 2.6.31 developers
By changesets
Ingo Molnar2762.6%
Peter Zijlstra2602.4%
Paul Mundt2041.9%
Takashi Iwai1501.4%
Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz1491.4%
Steven Rostedt1391.3%
Tejun Heo1341.3%
Johannes Berg1331.2%
Magnus Damm1191.1%
Mike Frysinger1151.1%
roel kluin1051.0%
Greg Kroah-Hartman1010.9%
Erik Andrén1000.9%
Paul Mackerras850.8%
Mark Brown850.8%
Bill Pemberton820.8%
Jaswinder Singh Rajput790.7%
Ben Dooks720.7%
Joe Perches720.7%
Alexander Beregalov710.7%
By changed lines
Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz22074918.3%
Jerry Chuang784416.5%
Forest Bond508344.2%
David Daney400523.3%
Jerome Glisse386043.2%
Vlad Zolotarov232601.9%
Ingo Molnar226141.9%
James Smart192091.6%
Bill Pemberton172491.4%
dmitry pervushin145321.2%
Greg Kroah-Hartman132341.1%
Wai Yew CHAY127411.1%
Michael Chan118871.0%
Linus Walleij116261.0%
Paul Mundt107350.9%
Peter Zijlstra102020.8%
Zhu Yi101970.8%
Ben Dooks101500.8%
Johannes Berg95320.8%
Kalle Valo92630.8%

Ingo Molnar always shows up near the top of the changeset statistics. He has, as usual, contributed work all over the core kernel and x86 architecture code, but the bulk of his work this time is in the performance counters code; most of Peter Zijlstra's contributions were also in this area. The merging of this fast-changing subsystem caused those two developers to be responsible for 5% of the patches going into the 2.6.31 release. Paul Mundt wrote a vast number of Super-H architecture patches, and Takashi Iwai contributed large numbers of ALSA patches.

#5 on the changesets list is Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz, who also comes out on top in terms of the number of lines changed. He contributed a few IDE patches, despite having handed off responsibility for that subsystem, but most of his work went into the cleaning-up of Ralink wireless drivers in the staging tree. This cleanup resulted in the removal of an amazing 208,000 lines of code. Jerry Chuang added the RealTek RTL8192SU wireless driver (to staging), Forest Bond added the VIA Technologies VT6655 driver (to staging), David Daney did a bunch of MIPS work (including adding the Octeon Ethernet driver to the staging tree), and Jerome Glisse added kernel mode setting support for Radeon graphics chipsets.

As we have seen in the past few development cycles, the staging tree is the source of much of the change in the kernel tree. The nature of that change is, itself, changing, though. The rush of adding out-of-tree drivers to the staging tree has slowed considerably; we're starting to see more work dedicated to fixing up the code which is already there.

The developers contributing to 2.6.31 were supported by a minimum of 194 employers. The most active of those were:

Most active 2.6.31 employers
By changesets
(None)170416.0%
Red Hat158714.9%
Intel8788.2%
(Unknown)8467.9%
IBM6676.3%
Novell6145.8%
Renesas Technology3453.2%
Fujitsu2232.1%
(Consultant)2122.0%
Analog Devices2122.0%
Oracle1751.6%
Nokia1311.2%
AMD1291.2%
Atheros Communications1181.1%
MontaVista1041.0%
Xelerated AB1000.9%
(Academia)920.9%
NetApp910.9%
HP860.8%
Wolfson Microelectronics850.8%
By lines changed
(None)31180325.8%
Red Hat12483110.3%
Realtek784416.5%
Intel625595.2%
Broadcom518064.3%
Logic Supply514014.3%
(Unknown)471653.9%
Cavium Networks400863.3%
IBM399913.3%
Novell319792.6%
Renesas Technology316742.6%
(Consultant)236592.0%
Emulex192091.6%
University of Virginia176071.5%
Nokia162341.3%
Embedded Alley Solutions152291.3%
Creative Technology127411.1%
Oracle117041.0%
Analog Devices107600.9%
Texas Instruments106390.9%

The top group in either category is developers working on their own time, followed by Red Hat, which merged a few large chunks of code this time around.

A look at non-author signoffs (a hint as to which subsystem maintainers admitted the patches into the mainline) shows a continuation of recent trends:

Top non-author signoffs in 2.6.31
Individuals
David S. Miller96410.1%
Ingo Molnar9489.9%
Greg Kroah-Hartman5826.1%
John W. Linville5756.0%
Andrew Morton5696.0%
Mauro Carvalho Chehab5355.6%
Linus Torvalds2542.7%
James Bottomley2372.5%
Benny Halevy1912.0%
Paul Mundt1591.7%
Employers
Red Hat368638.7%
Novell106111.1%
Intel8298.7%
Google5726.0%
(None)4224.4%
IBM3834.0%
Linux Foundation2542.7%
Oracle2282.4%
Panasas1932.0%
(Consultant)1681.8%

49.8% of the patches going into the mainline for 2.6.31 passed through the hands of developers working for just two companies: Red Hat and Novell. Linux kernel developers work for a large number of companies, but subsystem maintainers are increasingly concentrated in a very small number of places.

In summary, it is a fairly typical development cycle for the kernel in recent times. The number of changes is high (but not a record), as is the number of developers. The transient effect of the staging tree is beginning to fade; it is becoming just another path for drivers heading into the mainline. As a whole, the process seems to be functioning in a smooth and robust manner.

(As always, your editor would like to thank Greg Kroah-Hartman for his assistance in the preparation of these statistics.)

Index entries for this article
KernelReleases/2.6.31


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Development statistics for 2.6.31

Posted Aug 27, 2009 16:12 UTC (Thu) by wfp5p (subscriber, #56918) [Link]

I'd like to point out that "University of Virginia" should not appear on the employers list. While I (Bill Pemberton) am an employee of UVA, they do not pay me to work on the kernel.


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