Re: starting with 2.7
From: Bill Davidsen
Date: Wed Jan 05 2005 - 14:19:15 EST
Helge Hafting wrote:
Felipe Alfaro Solana wrote:
I don't pretend that kernel interfaces stay written in stone, for
ages. What I would like is that, at least, those interfaces were
stable enough, let's say for a few months for a stable kernel series,
so I don't have to keep bothering my propietary VMWare vendor to fix
the problems for me, since the new kernel interface broke VMWare.
Yeah, I know I could decide not to upgrade kernels in last instance,
but that's not always possible.
You should definitely bother your proprietary vendor all the time, they
will then
see more clearly that they have to act fast _if_ they want to stay
proprietary.
If kernel interfaces need to be changed for whatever reason, change
them in 2.7, -mm, -ac or whatever tree first, and let the community
know beforehand what those changes will be, and be prepared to adapt.
Meanwhile, try to leave 2.6 as stable as possible.
Do you follow -mm, -ac, and friends closely? Most changes do happen in
-mm first.
So you have time, all the way up to the next release. Use that time to
bug your
vendor about the imminent change. There seems to be weeks between releases
now, plenty of time for a vendor to stay up-to-date.
What "plenty of time?" There are changes between the last -bk and the
next release in some cases, significant change within days of release. I
can't imagine a vendor chasing -mm between releases, and I bet even
Andrew couldn't say exactly what will or won't go into a release. He has
goals, but the patches he gets may not be stable enough to include; he
wants stability, but things may NEED to be changed in the case of a
major bug or security issue.
Some changes, like 4k stacks, can be seen coming, and changes for them
don't prevent things from working the old way. Some have to be one thing
or the other at the level of drivers and vmware, so they may not be
available the instant a new release hits the spool.
At least things like vmware *will* be fixed, I expect to run 2.4 on some
machines indefinitely because the proprietary drivers stop there and I
can't justify replacing the whole system just to get 2.6.
--
-bill davidsen (davidsen@xxxxxxx)
"The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the
last possible moment - but no longer" -me
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