2.8.0?

[Posted May 23, 2011 by corbet]

From:		Linus Torvalds <torvalds-AT-linux-foundation.org>
To:		Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel-AT-vger.kernel.org>, linux-arch-AT-vger.kernel.org, DRI <dri-devel-AT-lists.freedesktop.org>, linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel-AT-vger.kernel.org>, linux-mm <linux-mm-AT-kvack.org>
Subject:		(Short?) merge window reminder
Date:		Mon, 23 May 2011 12:13:29 -0700
Message-ID:		<BANLkTi=PLuZhx1=rCfOtg=aOTuC1UbuPYg@mail.gmail.com>
Cc:		Greg KH <gregkh-AT-suse.de>, Andrew Morton <akpm-AT-linux-foundation.org>
Archive‑link:		Article

So I've been busily merging stuff, and just wanted to send out a quick
reminder that I warned people in the 39 announcement that this might
be a slightly shorter merge window than usual, so that I can avoid
having to make the -rc1 release from Japan using my slow laptop (doing
"allyesconfig" builds on that thing really isn't in the cards, and I
like to do those to verify things - even if we've already had a few
cases where arch include differences made it less than effective in
finding problems).

And judging by the merge window so far, that early close (probably
Sunday - I'll be on airplanes next Monday) looks rather likely. I
already seem to have a fairly sizable portion of linux-next in my
tree, and there haven't been any huge upsets.

So anybody who was planning a last-minute "please pull" - this is a
heads-up. Don't do it, you might miss the window entirely.

Did I miss any major development mailing lists with stuff pending?

                       Linus

PS. The voices in my head also tell me that the numbers are getting
too big. I may just call the thing 2.8.0. And I almost guarantee that
this PS is going to result in more discussion than the rest, but when
the voices tell me to do things, I listen.
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Noooooooo!

Posted May 23, 2011 20:05 UTC (Mon) by Oddscurity (guest, #46851) [Link] (7 responses)

Please wait until 2.6.42, it's the right answer.

Noooooooo!

Posted May 23, 2011 20:08 UTC (Mon) by bmillemathias (guest, #54343) [Link] (4 responses)

No !! 2.6.216 would be the last one of the 2.6 serie

Noooooooo!

Posted May 23, 2011 20:20 UTC (Mon) by danielpf (guest, #4723) [Link] (3 responses)

Donald Knuth likes converging to 3.14159...
Linus might choose 2.7.1828... the place is not yet taken.

Noooooooo!

Posted May 23, 2011 20:29 UTC (Mon) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link] (1 responses)

Sorry, but e is already taken. One word: metafont.

Noooooooo!

Posted May 23, 2011 21:27 UTC (Mon) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]

Let's pick 1.61 ... oh damn, we're past that. Then, 2ε it should be.

Noooooooo!

Posted May 23, 2011 20:38 UTC (Mon) by creemj (subscriber, #56061) [Link]

mf --version
Metafont 2.718281 (TeX Live 2009)

That spot is already taken.

How about Omega --- the algorithmic halting probability? :-) :-) :-)

Noooooooo!

Posted May 23, 2011 20:17 UTC (Mon) by jcm (subscriber, #18262) [Link]

Clearly 2.6.47 would be the right (Trekie) answer.

Noooooooo!

Posted May 23, 2011 21:03 UTC (Mon) by a9db0 (subscriber, #2181) [Link]

I second this, particularly as tomorrow is Towel Day.

C'mon Linus, give us a kernel dedicated to Douglas Adams.

2.8.0?

Posted May 23, 2011 20:17 UTC (Mon) by yokem_55 (subscriber, #10498) [Link] (3 responses)

Linus needs more marketing related voices in his head. Linux2 8th Enterprise Edition 4.0 would be more like it...

2.8.0?

Posted May 23, 2011 20:24 UTC (Mon) by linuxrocksrulers (guest, #75128) [Link]

But then getting more and more commercial...
(Ubuntu website is "marketing" too much...)

2.8.0?

Posted May 24, 2011 0:54 UTC (Tue) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link] (1 responses)

I think it's high time for Linux 2008.

2.8.0?

Posted May 24, 2011 13:42 UTC (Tue) by linuxrocksrulers (guest, #75128) [Link]

I understood this like following:

USUAL KERNEL
2.6: 2006
2.8: 2008
2.10: 2010

MODERN KERNEL
2.12: 2012

Hah

2.8.0?

Posted May 23, 2011 20:25 UTC (Mon) by yoshi314 (guest, #36190) [Link] (3 responses)

it makes me wonder how many userspace tools or toolchains would break because of this change.

2.8.0?

Posted May 23, 2011 20:49 UTC (Mon) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (1 responses)

They had enough time to prepare .. it is not like this discussion is new.
And anyways most stuff is FOSS and can be changed. If no breakage would be a valid argument we would end up with 2.6.2323.47 which is just pathetic.

What I would like to see is a "stable" versioning algorithm.

3.0?

Posted May 23, 2011 22:28 UTC (Mon) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]

OK, so according to https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/5/23/405 there might be a scheme:

(int)(Linux age / 10) + 1

2.8.0?

Posted May 25, 2011 15:07 UTC (Wed) by jonescb (guest, #74600) [Link]

Anything that checks for Linux 2.6 explicitly is already broken by design.

2.8.0?

Posted May 23, 2011 20:36 UTC (Mon) by prometheanfire (subscriber, #65683) [Link] (3 responses)

What's in a name...

2.8.0?

Posted May 24, 2011 3:43 UTC (Tue) by idupree (guest, #71169) [Link] (2 responses)

What's in a name? In this case, how easy it is to Google. It's ridiculously awesome that you can enter "2.6.34" for example and pretty much the only thing in the world with that version number is the Linux kernel. Going back to the .0s would make us compete with the Wordpresses of the world again, for a while. Going to 3.x might be worse because that distinctive two-digit marker (2.6, or 2.8) is lost permanently.

(I seriously noticed this sometime.)

2.8.0?

Posted May 24, 2011 20:53 UTC (Tue) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (1 responses)

That seems more like a cute trick than an actually useful feature, in all but the most extraordinary cases. I mean, how hard is it to type "linux" first? Of course I may be biased, since I rarely google for particular kernel versions in the first place, being more interested in languages, compilers, interpreters, libraries, databases and assorted servers. To keep up with everything I need to know about kernel development, I click my LWN bookmark rather than heading to Google! :)

(And what's with the anti-Wordpress dig? It's not something I use, particularly, but it's free/libre/open source, and probably of interest to more people than the gory details of the kernel.)

2.8.0?

Posted May 25, 2011 2:39 UTC (Wed) by idupree (guest, #71169) [Link]

When there's a bug (hardware-compatibility that is worse or better in a newer version - these changes often happen), I search kernel versions. It is amazing how it's not 100% trivial to get Google to find a particular version of a particular software. I can't remember an example right now, but when you combine a common software-name, a version number, AND a bug description/keyword... Sometimes you get that version of a different piece of software, that just happens to mention the piece you're looking for a bug in. If you use quote-marks like "linux 2.6.36" then you exclude a lot of relevant information.

(Wordpress is just some random piece of software that I use. I guess it has the searchability problem that adding "wordpress" to your Google phrase finds you people's blogs, not just info about the software. And on their blog, maybe they were talking about a version of SimCity or something...)

2.8.0?

Posted May 23, 2011 21:38 UTC (Mon) by smadu2 (guest, #54943) [Link] (1 responses)

Will this create linux-2.8 git repository ? Or continue using linux-2.6.git - if its latter its just version cheating :).

Although its sad it was version bloat rather than something major happening (like rapture) that warranted this change.

2.8.0?

Posted May 23, 2011 21:59 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

When they talked about the Rapture of the Nerds I was hoping for something more transcendent than 'the numbers are getting too high'. ;}

No 2.7 ?

Posted May 23, 2011 22:02 UTC (Mon) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link] (9 responses)

Whatever happened to 2.7 ? But I suppose something similar happened between IPv4 and IPv6, there never was a genuine v5.

No 2.7 ?

Posted May 23, 2011 22:16 UTC (Mon) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]

2.odd were/are for unstable/dev branches, but with a such a small subscriber nr. you probably know that.

No 2.7 ?

Posted May 23, 2011 22:20 UTC (Mon) by alspnost (guest, #2763) [Link] (4 responses)

Hmmm, it's almost like you're new to this game! It's been so long since 2.5 that people have forgotten there used to be development series numbered 2.[odd] :)

No 2.7 ?

Posted May 24, 2011 8:09 UTC (Tue) by gilboa (guest, #23856) [Link]

As much as I love the 2.6/stable model, I do miss the feeling of living on the 2.5.x edge :)

No 2.7 ?

Posted May 24, 2011 21:01 UTC (Tue) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (2 responses)

But there aren't development branches any more, so the reason for skipping 2.7 no longer exists. There actually was a 2.5 branch, even if it was the development branch. If Linus jumps to 2.8, there won't be any 2.7 series at all!

Of course, if he jumps to 2.8, then he's got the option of restarting the development branches, starting with 2.9, whereas if he makes 2.7 a release branch, it pretty much commits the project to not using odd-numbered development branches for a long time. So if he wants to keep that option open, jumping to 2.8 makes sense, but otherwise, it seems pointless and a bit weird.

No 2.7 ?

Posted May 25, 2011 11:01 UTC (Wed) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link] (1 responses)

For good or ill people have grown accustomed to Linux and its even-is-stable convention. Going to 2.7 would be unnecessarily confusing, bad marketing and probably scary.

No 2.7 ?

Posted May 25, 2011 11:42 UTC (Wed) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]

Really? It's been 8 years since an odd-is-unstable version! It's not too long now till we reach half the life of the kernel (in years) since there was an odd version...and I'd bet that already more than half the users *and* the developers weren't touching linux before 2.6.0.

Actually there was...

Posted May 24, 2011 6:47 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

But I suppose something similar happened between IPv4 and IPv6, there never was a genuine v5.

Yes and no. IPv5 was fringe experimental protocol (and it was not actually called IPv5 but it's authors), but it still took the slot. There are nothing to do this for Linux: AFAICS 2.7 was never used by anyone.

Actually there was...

Posted May 24, 2011 21:07 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

iirc 2.7 does already exist.

It was invoked by our friendly legal clowns the SCOG people, who complained that it was one of the versions of linux that infringed their precious eye pee.

Cheers,
Wol

Have they shown this version to the world?

Posted May 25, 2011 6:00 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

I think only pointer to the version 2.7 exist. They just used time machine to fine complaint and missed correct time frame. That's why they lost: Linux currently does not infringe but it will.

To not escalate time paradox any further we must create version 2.7 ASAP.

Emacs solution

Posted May 23, 2011 22:19 UTC (Mon) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link] (37 responses)

He could always pull an Emacs and just drop the 2.6 part.

Emacs solution

Posted May 24, 2011 0:00 UTC (Tue) by agrover (guest, #55381) [Link] (36 responses)

Or go all the way to Linux 3.0!

Emacs solution

Posted May 24, 2011 2:16 UTC (Tue) by xxiao (guest, #9631) [Link] (35 responses)

Linux 2011.05

Year.Month can be used for good, no need to worry about 2.8, 3.0, 3.2, which is boring.

"What, why are you still using Linux 2004.06, that's too old, upgrade now!"
sounds better than
"Gosh, what is 2.6.7? when was it released?"

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 3:43 UTC (Tue) by pflugstad (subscriber, #224) [Link] (31 responses)

I actually like this better than (essentially) the simply incrementing number used now. It gives you a much better feel for how old a particular kernel is.

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 4:18 UTC (Tue) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link] (22 responses)

While I like date-based myself it has an awkward complication.

We don't know precisely when the next version of Linux will be released, so we don't know what it's name will be, so we cannot give meaningful names to the -rc releases that precede it.

I guess we could just decide that the next release will be 11.07 and if slips through to an August release date, we don't worry about it.
Or we could aim for early July, but call it 11.08.. then it is will probably be released early and we will look like we are very efficient.

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 4:32 UTC (Tue) by xxiao (guest, #9631) [Link] (12 responses)

half-year based release seems predictable for other projects and a reasonable duration(close to the average gap between 2.6.x releases).

maybe it's time for Linus to stick to the 6-month release cycle now? this may bring efficiency for related projects as well, also you can have the long-term kernel every few years, this is how ubuntu works these days and it's quite good in practice I think.

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 6:16 UTC (Tue) by corsac (subscriber, #49696) [Link] (11 responses)

> half-year based release seems predictable for other projects and a reasonable duration(close to the average gap between 2.6.x releases).

It's more like ~70 days, which is just above two months. Where do you pick that half a year from?

> maybe it's time for Linus to stick to the 6-month release cycle now? this may bring efficiency for related projects as well, also you can have the long-term kernel every few years, this is how ubuntu works these days and it's quite good in practice I think.

Well, ubuntu is fairly new in this game, but Gentoo was already using that release scheme (when they were still releasing). And that releasing scheme is not really a good indicator in case of a kernel. 2.6.32 has been released dec 3rd 2009 so it would have been called 2009.12 (or even 2009.9 if we count the merge window close) but latest release of that kernel was yesterday so it's not really a good indication of the level of support.

You can't say you have a two-years old kernel, you *must* upgrade, it's just wrong. All in all, I don't even think it's worth discussing that scheme, sorry for losing your time...

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 6:29 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (10 responses)

if you think that the latest 2.6.32 really has all the fixes that are in 2.6.39 you are sadly mistaken.

yes, 2.6.39 contains some bugs that aren't in 2.6.32.x as well, and each organization should balance the risk of new bugs vs the risk of bugfixes not getting backported.

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 6:31 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (5 responses)

if this is really a concern, then you could make the -stable version be the number of months between the kernel release and the -stable release (or if that's too complicated, make it year.month)

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 6:34 UTC (Tue) by corsac (subscriber, #49696) [Link] (4 responses)

> if this is really a concern, then you could make the -stable version be the number of months between the kernel release and the -stable release (or if that's too complicated, make it year.month)

Sure, that's a lot easier than 3.0.42

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 7:30 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (3 responses)

which is older, which is more 'stable'

3.0.42
3.9.3
3.10.0

2009.9.2.9/2009.9.33
2011.2.0.4/2011.2.4
2011.5.0

either way you do the date thing, you can then see how old the base kernel is, and figure out how recently it was updated (which also lets you notice when an old kernel series is no longer being updated)

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 7:43 UTC (Tue) by corsac (subscriber, #49696) [Link] (2 responses)

> either way you do the date thing, you can then see how old the base kernel is, and figure out how recently it was updated (which also lets you notice when an old kernel series is no longer being updated)

My point is that we (usually) don't care how old the base kernel is for stable series.

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 8:30 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

in my opinion you should care about how old the base of a kernel is.

there are a _lot_ of things that don't get backported, some is hardware support, some is performance improvements, some are cleanups of code that may or may not fix bugs, some are bugfixes that people don't think are important enough, some are bugfixes that are considered too intrusive/dangerous to backport.

the number of people working on doing backports is rather small compared to the number of people working on the latest versions

look at the number of patches in a -stable release, even the big ones are seldom more than 100-200 changesets, out of the 10,000 or so changesets in each new release. even if there are a LOT of -stable releases for a particular kernel, the number of changes that get backported are considerably less than 10% of the changes that go into the next release, and as a kernel gets older, fewer changes are backported. by the time you get to a kernel that's 10 releases back, I would guess that far fewer than 1% of the changes have been backported

actually, we can look at numbers for this (fun with git)

2.6.27 - 2.6.37 had 113521 changesets
2.6.27 - 2.6.27.57 had 2891 changesets

2.6.32 - 2.6.39 had 76108 changesets
2.6.32 - 2.6.32.27 had 2892 changesets

2.6.38 - 2.6.29 had 11031 changesets
2.6.38 - 2.6.38.7 had 3101 changesets

so I was a little off in my 1% guess, and I don't have the most recent versions of all the longterm kernels (I pulled from kernel.org and from the stable tree)

but do you really want to bet that the rest of the changes that did't get backported are really all for things you don't need?

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 8:36 UTC (Tue) by corsac (subscriber, #49696) [Link]

> look at the number of patches in a -stable release, even the big ones are seldom more than 100-200 changesets, out of the 10,000 or so changesets in each new release.

This is more an advantage than a drawback.

> the number of people working on doing backports is rather small compared to the number of people working on the latest versions

Sure, but the changes are different too. And that's also why a lot of distributions use 2.6.32 for their stable, long time support release. So the stable maintenance work is shared.

> even if there are a LOT of -stable releases for a particular kernel, the number of changes that get backported are considerably less than 10% of the changes that go into the next release, and as a kernel gets older, fewer changes are backported. by the time you get to a kernel that's 10 releases back, I would guess that far fewer than 1% of the changes have been backported

That's the whole point of having stable releases.

> but do you really want to bet that the rest of the changes that did't get backported are really all for things you don't need?

Yes

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 6:33 UTC (Tue) by corsac (subscriber, #49696) [Link] (3 responses)

> if you think that the latest 2.6.32 really has all the fixes that are in 2.6.39 you are sadly mistaken.

If you read again, you'll see I didn't say that.

> yes, 2.6.39 contains some bugs that aren't in 2.6.32.x as well, and each organization should balance the risk of new bugs vs the risk of bugfixes not getting backported.

2.6.39 (and all release since 2.6.33) are just that: new releases, with tons of new stuff added, stuff removed, lot of changes etc. 2.6.32 is *stable* release, which is something people really needed, especially at the kernel level. And it does get a lot of fixes, either directly or backported when needed.

On top of that, distributions do a good job filling the gap of the new hardware support by carefully backporting some drivers changes when needed.

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 7:23 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

many fixes are backported, my point is that nobody tries to claim that all significant/important/needed/security/<your term here> fixes are backported

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 7:42 UTC (Tue) by corsac (subscriber, #49696) [Link] (1 responses)

> many fixes are backported, my point is that nobody tries to claim that all significant/important/needed/security/<your term here> fixes are backported

I think you underestimate that amount, the amount of people working on that, the amount of time spent on that and the importance it has.

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 11:15 UTC (Tue) by nicooo (guest, #69134) [Link]

> the amount of time spent on that

the amount of time wasted on that

ftfy

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 5:08 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (5 responses)

name it based on when the merge window for that release opened. there's no ambiguity there.

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 5:37 UTC (Tue) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (4 responses)

While I think that most reasonable people would prefer a date based versioning scheme I think the marketing departments of all the big LF members would hate it.

Just imagine:
That brand new HP phone ships with Linux 2009.12?
Super awesome Enerprise Linux 15.6 Could Edition uses a patched 2005.1 kernel?

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 5:57 UTC (Tue) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link] (2 responses)

> While I think that most reasonable people would prefer a date based versioning scheme

I would have thought so to, but at the kernel summit when Linus ran his "straw poll" (https://lwn.net/Articles/413061/) he didn't even ask for votes for that option as he assumed almost no-one would want it (and based on the votes he got for the other options, there is a fair chance he was right).

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 6:19 UTC (Tue) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (1 responses)

Hmm, that LWN article just states that kernel devs were against changing from 2.6 to something else. The way I read it it doesn't say that date based was less popular than anything else (besides staying with the current scheme)

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 6:35 UTC (Tue) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]

The article glosses over the boring details.

The way I remember it, there where 3 options:
A - no change
B - next version 3.0
C - change to date format.

Vote went:
A - 42
B - 33
C - let's not bother, no-one wants that.

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 6:16 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

just imagine,

wouldn't that be nice?

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 9:27 UTC (Tue) by epeeist (guest, #1743) [Link]

"We don't know precisely when the next version of Linux will be released, so we don't know what it's name will be, so we cannot give meaningful names to the -rc releases that precede it." So why not base the name on the month that it was started rather than the month that it was finished?

Date based

Posted May 26, 2011 17:27 UTC (Thu) by PaulDickson (subscriber, #478) [Link] (1 responses)

We code use [year].[release #] where year is determined by when the merge window opens and the release # is the number of releases for that year. This would mean we know in advance what the release would be when the merge window opens.

This would mean that we could have 2012.6 (or 12.6) released in 2013.

Date based

Posted May 30, 2011 20:28 UTC (Mon) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link]

(or 12.6)

But what about the Y3k problem?

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 6:59 UTC (Tue) by job (guest, #670) [Link] (2 responses)

How often do you actually want to know which year a kernel was released? I can't say I have ever done that.

It's mostly an excuse to have large version numbers, I think. What would be useful is information if a certain API is included, but that would not be very practical (imagine 2.6.nobkl.fuse.iwlwifi.etc...).

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 7:22 UTC (Tue) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, first of all kernel releases are time based. So normal version numbers make less sense than date based ones. That just valid and logical.

Kernel devs may not need the dates, but it would help consumers comparing products that ship with Linux inside. Most grandmas won't care, but geeks and "prosumers" will.
And lazy companies couldn't BS people with stuff like: "We support the 2.6 kernel"

My hope is that a date based scheme would put a little more pressure on companies to work upstream and ship recent kernels.

But as I already said: Red Hat, HP, Google etc won't like it and they at the end of the day pay the bills for most of people deciding this, so it won't happen.

Date based

Posted May 24, 2011 10:38 UTC (Tue) by joib (subscriber, #8541) [Link]

Well, first of all kernel releases are time based. So normal version numbers make less sense than date based ones. That just valid and logical.

Well, if Linus goes ahead with 3.0 then it's a date based system, as Linus says himself. Namely 3.x is the x'th release in the 3rd decade since Linux was born. Perhaps Linus just doesn't want to base his versioning on the birth date of some religious figure.. :-/

Also, perhaps Linus shouldn't base his versioning on such provincial time units as various stuff related to how fast the earth rotates around its own axis and the suns. I vote for megaseconds (Ms) since the epoch!

As to the question whether some group will find the kernel version numbering scheme easy to understand, or acceptable, or whatever: Those for whom the kernel version matters can certainly figure out whatever scheme is used (as long as higher number == newer), for the rest it doesn't really matter (does your PHB know the version number of the Windows kernel in his laptop? No, I didn't think so either)

Date based

Posted May 25, 2011 0:40 UTC (Wed) by pflugstad (subscriber, #224) [Link] (3 responses)

Just to provide more detail on why I personally want this - we often have fights with management about sticking with some old crufty kernel, or going with a newer one. Simply saying: 2.6.27 is woefully out of date doesn't give the same sense as 2008.10 is almost 3 years old.

Yes I know all the other arguments about why you would want to use 2.6.27, but think about this: when 2.6.27 came out, a number of devices we use use frequently weren't even on the drawing board, or were brand spanking new and still being debugged (SSDs anyone?).

Date based

Posted May 25, 2011 17:37 UTC (Wed) by jzbiciak (guest, #5246) [Link]

Wow, you get to use 2.6.27? I'm still stuck with 2.6.9 on a (shudder) Pentium 4 at work.

Event based

Posted May 27, 2011 2:46 UTC (Fri) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link] (1 responses)

The reality is that kernel releases are event-driven, not time-driven. Which is good, as we'd have either thousands of brown-paper-bag releases or still be on version 1.x. Version dates are misleading, as the difference between two versions would yield no information on the number of events involved.

Now, one could argue that using events gives no indication of the time involved. However, when we talk of a kernel being "old" we don't been chronologically. What we mean is that the accumulation of time has resulted in a large enough change that the original is no longer tolerable.

It would, perhaps, be useful to increment by the number of significant kernel changes rather than by 1, at the cost of bloating the version number a bit. Gives more info, but only if there's a consensus on what is significant.

Chronological versioning, when the interval for a kernel is indeterminate (critical patches may come late and require several rounds of testing, for example, even for kernels with no user-significant changes), doesn't seem to tell you anything.

Event based

Posted May 27, 2011 3:20 UTC (Fri) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]

> The reality is that kernel releases are event-driven, not time-driven.

On what evidence do you base that claim?

It hasn't always been this way but the current release process is very much time based. There is a 2 week merge window for bugs to be added (as well as new features), then a 2 month (approx) stabilisation period for most of those bugs to be removed (but no new features). Then Linus releases and we repeat.

Linus does have some discretion to adjust those times and to extend or shorten the stabilisation period as seems appropriate, so there is a small extent to which events do drive the release, but it is mostly time based.

Date based

Posted May 25, 2011 10:35 UTC (Wed) by danielos (guest, #6053) [Link]

Yes, but it says nothing about technology, or shouldn't be said nothing? It is a software component, it is not a distribution.
However there are so many technological change and improvements between version that i could not increase the more significative digit, and the least is too less...
In my opinion if Linus thinks that progressive change has lead to a technological gap that make, say, 2.6.12 a totally different thing than 2.6.40, and most developer (and user, say C developer) feel the same, it is ok to switch to 2.8.0
.. Maybe there is a bit of marketing, but it make sense

Emacs solution

Posted May 24, 2011 7:47 UTC (Tue) by cate (subscriber, #1359) [Link]

Let's update the kernel! Hmm. what patches I should download?

Now it is pretty simple, with a blind 'wget'.

And anyway the kernel version are also binary 8-bit coded, so numbers should be <255. I don't know if this could be patched (stable API).

Emacs solution

Posted May 25, 2011 15:18 UTC (Wed) by jonescb (guest, #74600) [Link] (1 responses)

In the LKML thread someone already mentioned that the version numbers have to fit into 8 bits which 2011 does not. They could use 11 like Ubuntu does, but that's going to be a problem in 2100 (Y2K all over again).

Emacs solution

Posted May 25, 2011 19:56 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

except for the fact that having version 100 be released in 2100 makes a lot more sense than 100 being the year 2000 did.

making the version be year-2000 will take us to 2255, which is long enough for that field to be expanded to more than 8 bits.

besides, don't you know that everything will be re-done by 2038 anyway when time_t runs out? that's the date to worry about, not 62 years later.

Gimme Stardates!

Posted May 24, 2011 5:53 UTC (Tue) by ldo (guest, #40946) [Link] (3 responses)

So when do we move to stardates?

Myself, I started numbering one or two projects based on the number of days (including fractions) since 00:00:00 01-Jan-1970 UTC. Generally one decimal place is enough. For example:

ldo@theon:~> bc <<<"scale = 1; ($(Julian -f) - 2440588) / 1"
15118.2

Julian is here.

Gimme Stardates!

Posted May 24, 2011 6:23 UTC (Tue) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link]

See, it pays to read to the end. I never knew about "<<<" before.

Gimme Stardates!

Posted May 24, 2011 12:47 UTC (Tue) by stijn (subscriber, #570) [Link] (1 responses)

I use YY-DiY (two digits for year, day-in-year): date '+%y-%j'. Today is 11-144.

Gimme Stardates!

Posted May 24, 2011 22:48 UTC (Tue) by Karellen (subscriber, #67644) [Link]

Oh yeah? According to my calendar, it's 1993-09-6475 ;-)

2.8.0?

Posted May 24, 2011 7:38 UTC (Tue) by rilder (guest, #59804) [Link] (1 responses)

In a latter comment he mentions about 3.0 . Now that is something ! -- Linux 3k, or we can take cue from browser version race and start making major version change for every new release.

2.8.0?

Posted May 24, 2011 9:56 UTC (Tue) by exadon (guest, #5324) [Link]

Please stop spreading this misconception: There is no browser version race.

2.(year-2000).x

Posted May 24, 2011 10:04 UTC (Tue) by przemoc (guest, #67594) [Link] (4 responses)

There are various ideas how to improve version numbering in Linux.

{2.8,3.0}.x, year.month, etc.

I have other proposal, that does not address particularly Linus' concern, yet still has some upsides.

2.(year - 2000).(continuity of current patch version)

I wouldn't introduce it before 2012, to avoid for the last time use of odd number and to prepare users for upcoming change.
Presumably first release in the new year would be:

2.12.42

and later 2.12.43, 2.12.44, 2.12.45, 2.13.46, and so on...

It's good because of:
- 2.x preservation,
- hinting the year of non-stable-point release,
- continuity in patch (AKA Makefile's sublevel) version numbering, which is presumably the most important part here - so you can use it alone [e.g. .42] w/o ambiguities.

And in year following .99 hit (in ~14 years), patch version would be zeroed to avoid use of 3 digits (obviously for releases after .99 in the same year it is unavoidable). I really doubt that in future anyone will be using 14 year old kernel, so such resetting isn't harmful at all.

YMMV

2.(year-2000).x

Posted May 24, 2011 13:13 UTC (Tue) by edlenz (guest, #12021) [Link] (1 responses)

Maybe using the md5sum of the kernel sources.... :)

2.(year-2000).x

Posted May 25, 2011 17:40 UTC (Wed) by jzbiciak (guest, #5246) [Link]

Git outta here... ;-)

2.(year-2000).x

Posted May 24, 2011 13:35 UTC (Tue) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (1 responses)

How the hell is this going to silence the voices in Linus' head??

Read the PS. again.

2.(year-2000).x

Posted May 25, 2011 19:01 UTC (Wed) by przemoc (guest, #67594) [Link]

Why it should? Linus head is Linus' and his family's worry. I don't have right to inject nor eject anything from there. I may only stick some ideas via discussion, but that's all.

Maybe read again my comment, where I clearly wrote that "[my version numbering proposal] does not address particularly Linus' concern".

Why bother?

Posted May 24, 2011 11:00 UTC (Tue) by exadon (guest, #5324) [Link] (2 responses)

Everything works fine, there is nothing to gain but a good chance to break a lot of things.

Why bother?

Posted May 24, 2011 11:29 UTC (Tue) by marduk (guest, #3831) [Link]

I agree. There once was a particular method for versioning the kernel. Now it's just "the voices in my head told me to...".

Why bother?

Posted May 24, 2011 13:38 UTC (Tue) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

Anything this breaks deserves to be broken, and was going to break sooner or later anyway simply because the fields of Linux version numbers are only 8 bits wide.

2.8.0?

Posted May 24, 2011 12:03 UTC (Tue) by dakt (guest, #74570) [Link]

Wait for the btrfs to become stable...then release 2.8.0 ;)

2.8.0?

Posted May 24, 2011 13:49 UTC (Tue) by MisterIO (guest, #36192) [Link]

I see that in this cycle they removed the rt2870 staging driver. I hope the rt2x00 has made a huge forward leap at the same time, because the version currently in 2.6.39 completely sucks for rt2870usb.

2.8.0?

Posted May 24, 2011 15:22 UTC (Tue) by mlankhorst (subscriber, #52260) [Link]

Here, have a patch to upgrade to linux 2012

diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 123d858..98132f4 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -1,8 +1,8 @@
-VERSION = 2
-PATCHLEVEL = 6
-SUBLEVEL = 39
+VERSION = 2012
+PATCHLEVEL =0
+SUBLEVEL = 0
EXTRAVERSION =
-NAME = Flesh-Eating Bats with Fangs
+NAME = Premium Linux for Enterprises

# *DOCUMENTATION*
# To see a list of typical targets execute "make help"

--
Surely nobody can resist such a patch?

2.8.0?

Posted May 25, 2011 9:58 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link] (1 responses)

Since the "2" and the "6" are not going to change, why not simply drop them? Instead of having "Linux 2.6.39, 2.6.40" etc., we could simply have "Linux 39, 40, etc.".

2.8.0?

Posted May 25, 2011 14:50 UTC (Wed) by proski (guest, #104) [Link]

Having two numbers for major changes is excessive, but it would be nice to keep at least one major version number for incompatible changes (e.g. syscall cleanup). I'd rather go with 3.0, 3.1,... 3.42 etc.

2.8.0?

Posted May 26, 2011 7:37 UTC (Thu) by soli (guest, #75189) [Link]

Linux20 would be great!

3.12 - 3.99, then 4.11 - 4.99, then...

Posted May 26, 2011 10:07 UTC (Thu) by domo (guest, #14031) [Link]

suggestion for number base:

3.12 - 3.99
4.11 - 4.99
5.11 - 5.99
...
9.11 - 9.99

reasoning:

1) 2 digits less than 3 (3rd digit for maintenance releases)
2) the above numbering keeps all in alphabethical order
3) 3.11 dropped for not mismatching with something from early nineties

Note that if there is like 6 releases per year, this numbering scheme
would take us far into 22nd century -- probably into 23rd...

2.8.0?

Posted May 26, 2011 21:17 UTC (Thu) by ortalo (guest, #4654) [Link]

What about changing the kernel name on occasion too?
I mean, Linux has been used for a long time; other hackers may deserve some credit too no?
And that would be more amusing than mere numbers, imagine questions on LKML: are you running Cox, Andrex or Rustyx?
Admittedly, the ordering might be a little more difficult to remember than with integers; but maybe we could sort out some easily remembered scheme. I propose the order of chronological appearance in LWN quotes of the week.