Re: Bumping required kernels to 3.0 for Linux backports ?

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 12:44 AM, Takashi Iwai <tiwai@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> At Wed, 9 Apr 2014 14:06:13 -0700,
> Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 09, 2014 at 01:52:29PM -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
>> > On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 1:22 PM, Greg Kroah-Hartman
>> > <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > > On Wed, Apr 09, 2014 at 01:01:23PM -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
>> > >> On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 12:12 PM, Greg Kroah-Hartman
>> > >> <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > >> > On Wed, Apr 09, 2014 at 11:28:55AM -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
>> > >> >> On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 2:18 AM, Felix Fietkau <nbd@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > >> >> > The oldest kernel in OpenWrt that we're still supporting with updates of
>> > >> >> > the backports tree is 3.3, so raising the minimum requirement to 3.0 is
>> > >> >> > completely fine with me.
>> > >> >>
>> > >> >> OK note that 3.3 is not listed on kernel.org as supported. I'm fine in
>> > >> >> carrying the stuff for those for now but ultimately it'd also be nice
>> > >> >> if we didn't even have to test the kernels in between which are not
>> > >> >> listed. This does however raise the question of how often a kernel in
>> > >> >> between a list of supported kernels gets picked up to be supported
>> > >> >> eventually. Greg, Jiri, do you happen to know what the likelyhood of
>> > >> >> that can be?
>> > >> >
>> > >> > I don't know of anything ever getting picked up after I have said it
>> > >> > would not be supported anymore.
>> > >>
>> > >> Great! How soon after a release do you mention whether or not it will
>> > >> be supported? Like say, 3.14, which was just released.
>> > >
>> > > I only mention it around the time that it would normally go end-of-life.
>> > >
>> > > For example, if 3.13 were to be a release that was going to be "long
>> > > term", I would only say something around the normal time I would be no
>> > > longer supporting it.  Like in 2-3 weeks from now.
>> > >
>> > > So for 3.14, I'll not say anything about that until 3.16-rc1 is out,
>> > > give or take a week or two.
>> > >
>> > >> Also, as of late are you aware any distribution picking an unsupported
>> > >> kernel for their next choice of kernel?
>> > >
>> > > Sure, lots do, as they don't line up with my release cycles (I only pick
>> > > 1 long term kernel to maintain each year).  Look at the Ubuntu releases
>> > > for examples of that.  Also openSUSE and Fedora (although Fedora does
>> > > rev their kernel pretty regularly) don't usually line up.  The
>> > > "enterprise" distros are different, but even then, they don't always
>> > > line up either (which is why Jiri is maintaining 3.12...)
>> > >
>> > > Hope this helps,
>> >
>> > It does! Unless I don't hear any complaints then given that some
>> > distributions might choose a kernel in between and given also your
>> > great documented story behind the gains on trying to steer folks
>> > together on the 'ol 2.6.32 [0] and this now being faded, I'll be
>> > bumping backports to only support >= 3.0 soon, but we'll include all
>> > the series from 3.0 up to the latest. That should shrink compile /
>> > test time / support time on backports to 1/2.
>>
>> Why 3.0?  That's not supported by anyone anymore for "new hardware", I'd
>> move to 3.2 if you could, as that's the Debian stable release that will
>> be maintained for quite some time yet:
>>       https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html
>
> Well, the support for "new hardware" is what backports project itself
> does, isn't it?
>
> Besides, SLES11 is still supported, so yes, including 3.0.x would be
> helpful.

That's two stakeholders for 3.0 -- but nothing is voiced for anything
older than that. Today I will rip the older kernels into oblivion.
Thanks for all the feedback!

 Luis
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