[cip-dev] Maintenance policies and early considerations IV

[agustin.benito@codethink.co.uk (Agustin Benito Bethencourt)]

Hi,

On 22/09/16 14:59, Agustin Benito Bethencourt wrote:
> Hi,
>
> at CIP we need to have a clear view of what "Support" means in the
> context of the Super Long Term Support kernel.
>
> ++ What kind of support will CIP provide? To whom?
>
> CIP will support its members and their developers, not system
> administrators or end users.  With the current number of members, there
> should not be a need for a 'first line' of support between them and the
> CIP core developers, though that may change if membership grows
> significantly.
>
> Commercial Linux based distributions like RHEL promise that a subset of
> the kernel module API and ABI remains stable within a major release, so
> that many out-of-tree modules can be used without needing to update the
> module source or binaries along with the kernel.  Some IHVs rely on this
> to distribute driver modules in binary form.
>
> CIP should avoid making any such promise because:
>
> * Upstream fixes frequently change the kernel module API and/or ABI and
> backporting them in a way that does not is difficult and risky   - CIP
> users set their own kernel configurations, so there will not be a single
> kernel ABI for IHVs to target anyway

Correction:

Upstream fixes frequently change the kernel module API and/or ABI and 
backporting them in a way that is difficult and risky   - CIP users set 
their own kernel configurations, so there will not be a single kernel 
ABI for IHVs to target anyway

>
> * CIP users are responsible for binary releases of both the kernel and
> out-of-tree modules, so can ensure that they are properly synchronised.
>
> * The criteria for backporting bug fixes will presumably be based on
> 'stable-kernel-rules.txt'.  However, In CIP context, it is recommended
> to be more precise than that.
>
> Best Regards
>
Best regards
-- 
Agustin Benito Bethencourt
Principal Consultant - FOSS at Codethink
agustin.benito at codethink.co.uk