How is different version of kernel developped

How is different version of kernel developped

[Jimmy Pan]

Hi,
I am wondering how different version of kernel is discussed on kernel mailing list.
We can see that, the latest kernel stable is 3.9.4, and the mainline is 3.10-rc2 and there is an EOF say 3.8.13 and a longterm 3.4.47, and a linux-next
I have several questions:
1.When we see a patch on linux kernel mailing list, which kernel version is it based on?(seems never exsists a description in the patch)
2.What should we do if we whant to send a patch for different kernel version?
3.If a 3.x-rc turn out to be stable, is it going to be 3.x.1?
4.There is no 3.10 in linus' tree, what exactly is linus' tree?
5.Is linux-next a preview of the next mainline version? In this case 3.10-rc3

Thanks everybody for answering.

-- 

Best regards,
Jimmy Pan

Email: dspjmt@gmail.com
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Re: How is different version of kernel developped

[Richard Genoud]

Hi,
2013/5/26 Jimmy Pan <dspjmt@gmail.com>:
> Hi,
> I am wondering how different version of kernel is discussed on kernel mailing list.
> We can see that, the latest kernel stable is 3.9.4, and the mainline is 3.10-rc2 and there is an EOF say 3.8.13 and a longterm 3.4.47, and a linux-next
> I have several questions:
> 1.When we see a patch on linux kernel mailing list, which kernel version is it based on?(seems never exsists a description in the patch)
It's always the next kernel version (now that 3.11-rc1 is out, patches
are for 3.12).
Exception: patches that corrects bugs/regression of the current -rc
> 2.What should we do if we whant to send a patch for different kernel version?
There's no way. We simply don't.
Exception: stable kernels (cf Documentation/stable_kernel_rules.txt )
(only bug fixes)
(the procedure for sending patches to stable may change in a near future)
> 3.If a 3.x-rc turn out to be stable, is it going to be 3.x.1?
After the release candidates, *every* kernel release is "stable" (but
only a few will be "long term support")
example with 3.10 serie :
after the 3.9 is out, during 2 weeks, all the git trees of the
maintainers are merged in linux-next. conflicts are solved, and then
Linus pulls the code from those trees.
That makes 3.10-rc1.
after that, each week there's a new rc, and it stops when Linus juges
that there's no "important" regressions / bugs introduced by this rc
In our case, until 3.10-rc7
Then, 3.10 is tagged and said stable.
Greg GK will maintain this version (with bug fixes only) until
3.12-rc1 is out (I'm not very sure about the timings here, but that's
the idea)
> 4.There is no 3.10 in linus' tree, what exactly is linus' tree?
yes, there is : https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/
and the stable tree is here :
https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git/

> 5.Is linux-next a preview of the next mainline version? In this case 3.10-rc3
Yes, it's a preview of the next version. But it may not compile, or
eat your data !


Richard.
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