Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 13 Jan 2023 16:40:19 -0500 | From | "Theodore Ts'o" <> | Subject | Re: Reg the next LTS kernel (6.1?) |
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On Fri, Jan 13, 2023 at 05:22:56PM +0100, Greg KH wrote: > > I am just saying that developers/driver owners can simple do calculation to > > identify LTS version. When they know it they also know time when their > > deadline is for upstreaming work. It means if patch is accepted between > > 6.0-r1 and 6.0-rc5/6 they know that it will get to 6.1 merge window. > > That is what I am afraid of and if it causes problems I will purposfully > pick the previous release. This has happened in the past and is never > an excuse to get anything merged. Code gets merged when it is ready, > not based on a LTS release.
This is probably the best reason not to preannounce when the LTS release will be ahead of time --- because it can be abused by developers who try to get not-ready-for-prime-time features into what they think will be the LTS kernel, with the result that the last release of the year could be utterly unsitable for that perpose.
What I would try to tell people who are trying to get a feature into the enterprise distro kernel is to target a release in the *middle*a of the year, so that there is plenty of time to stablize it before the LTS kernel is cut.
Alternatively, I might work with the team reasponsible for release engineering the "product" kernel that I might be targetting (for example, for my company's Cloud Optimized OS) and since they follow the "upstream first" principle, once the feature is upstream, they will backport it into the various LTS release which we support for our cloud customers. And if it just so happens that Amazon Linux doesn't have the feature, but my company's cloud OS does ---- well, that's the way the cookie crumbles, and that's why the wise distro company will have kernel developers on staff, not just try to freeload off of the LTS maintainers. :-)
- Ted
P.S. And if you work for a hardware company, in general the LTS maintainers have been willing to handle backporting device drivers to older LTS kernels, since your customers might very well might want to stay on 5.15, 5.10, 5.4, etc. Of course, if your feature requires massive surgery all over the kernel, that's even more of a reason not incentivize people to make massive, risky changes right before the LTS kernel is cut.
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