Re: 5.10 LTS Kernel: 2 or 6 years?

[Hanjun Guo]

On 2021/2/19 17:08, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 19, 2021 at 04:54:24PM +0800, Hanjun Guo wrote:
> > Hi Greg,
> >
> > On 2021/1/26 15:29, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > [...]
> > > I want to see companies _using_ the kernel, and most importantly,
> > > _updating_ their devices with it, to know if it is worth to keep around
> > > for longer than 2 years.  I also, hopefully, want to see how those
> > > companies will help me out in the testing and maintenance of that kernel
> > > version in order to make supporting it for 6 years actually possible.
> > >
> > > So, are you planning on using 5.10?  Will you will be willing to help
> > > out in testing the -rc releases I make to let me know if there are any
> > > problems, and to help in pointing out and backporting any specific
> > > patches that your platforms need for that kernel release?
> >
> > We(Huawei) are willing to commit resources to help out in testing the
> > stable -rc releases, and to help to backport patches for stable kernels.
>
> Wonderful!
>
> > 5.10 stable kernel will be used for openEuler [1] kernel and also inside
> > Huawei. From customer's feedback, it's very important to see the stable
> > kernel we used to be maintained for 6 years in the community, and we
> > will use 5.10 kernel for at least 6 years, so we are willing to help
> > you and help ourselves :)
> >
> > In specific, we will start from the testing work, using HULK robot
> > (reports lots of bugs to mainline kernel) testing framework to test
> > compile, reboot, functional testing, and will extend to basic
> > performance regression testing in the future.
>
> Great!  Do you all need an email notification when the -rc releases come
> out for the stable trees, or can you trigger off of the -rc stable git
> tree?  Different CI systems work in different ways :)

We can trigger the test when you updated the -rc stable git tree,
by monitoring new commits for the stable branches. So if you push
all the commits at once for -rc stable branches, then our CI system
can work well.

> And if you can reply to the -rc release emails with a "Tested-by:" tag,
> I will be glad to add that to the release commit when that happens to
> show that you all have tested the release.

Thanks, will reply "Tested-by:" with -rc releases. We are working on
setting up the test farm and will report the test results in a week.

> > And we will start from ARM64 and X86 architecture first, and then extend
> > to other platforms.
>
> That's a good start, the useful ones :)
>
> > For patch backporting, will send the bugfix patches (from mainline)
> > we spotted, but I think this work may not doing in regular but will
> > be triggered as needed.
>
> That's fine, it is not something that happens at a regular interval.
>
> > Does this sound good to you?
>
> Yes it does, thank you so much.
>
> greg k-h

Thanks
Hanjun