From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753094Ab3EHGzN (ORCPT ); Wed, 8 May 2013 02:55:13 -0400 Received: from s3.sipsolutions.net ([144.76.43.152]:56992 "EHLO sipsolutions.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752961Ab3EHGzK (ORCPT ); Wed, 8 May 2013 02:55:10 -0400 Message-ID: <1367996104.8279.5.camel@jlt4.sipsolutions.net> Subject: Re: Dropping non supported kernels for kernel backports ? From: Johannes Berg To: "Luis R. Rodriguez" Cc: "backports@vger.kernel.org" , "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" Date: Wed, 08 May 2013 08:55:04 +0200 In-Reply-To: (sfid-20130508_015436_904346_B7B59A0B) References: (sfid-20130508_015436_904346_B7B59A0B) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" X-Mailer: Evolution 3.6.3-1 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, 2013-05-07 at 16:53 -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote: > Today the backports project provides support to backport down to > 2.6.24 for some subsystems. While this is good for users in practice > for development and maintenance this is quite a bit of overhead. Apart > from older kernels there are also gaps in between stable releases that > are not supported. For example 3.8 and 3.4 are supported but anything > in between is not (3.5, 3.6, 3.7), but we still do support them on the > backports project. At times this may mean a stable fix may get > propagated onto a the linux-3.4.y branch but obviously not the the > linux-3.5.y branch. If backporting expressing this becomes a bit > complex and we have dealt with it. In short, its a pain. > > I'd like to see what folks thought if we went ahead and *only* > supported kernels listed on kernel.org as supported. This would help > with the Linux kernel maintainer effort by also persuading users to > upgrade to stable releases as well as educating around this. > > If v3.10 backported releases are too soon to do this I propose we > seriously consider it for v3.11 releases. Any thoughts? I'm sure I'd still have to support other kernels random customers might be on (customers, they don't always do the smart thing ;-) ). I could do that myself of course, but then where would I stick the support patches? Maybe we could do a compromise and drop support for no longer supported kernels, but only a few years later? If we put the cutoff at 3 years now we'd drop everything before 2.6.34, for example. johannes