Crunch time -- Final merge candidates for 3.0 (the list).

[Rob Landley <landley@trommello.org>]

Okay, Linus has left for the Linux Lunacy Cruise (see www.geekcruises.com), 
which ends october 27.  When he gets back, he's implied that there will be 
EXACTLY ONE more set of last minute merges before we switch over to the 
3.0-pre (or 2.6-pre) series.  Those of you waiting for the last minute: this 
is it.

There are people patch-hoovering while Linus is off "lecturing" on a boat in 
the carribean, but we don't know who those are, so that's not useful.  What 
IS useful is knowing what the candidate patches are.  Not bug fixes, but new 
features with one final shot at 2.5.45.

The October 19 entry from Guillaume Boissiere's 2.5 status list 
(http://kernelnewbies.org/status/) has the following entries in the "ready 
for merging" state:

=====================================================

o in -ac PCMCIA Zoom video support (Alan Cox) 
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0203.1/0326.html

o in -ac Device mapper for Logical Volume Manager (LVM2)  (LVM2 team) 
http://www.sistina.com/products_lvm.htm

o in -mm VM large page support  (Many people) 
http://lse.sourceforge.net/

o in -mm  Page table sharing  (Daniel Phillips, Dave McCracken) 
http://www.geocrawler.com/mail/msg.php3?msg_id=7855063&list=35
(or possibly here:)
http://lists.insecure.org/lists/linux-kernel/2002/Oct/6446.html

o Ready - Build option for Linux Trace Toolkit (LTT) (Karim Yaghmour) 
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0204.1/0832.html

o Ready - Dynamic Probes (dprobes team) 
http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/linux/projects/dprobes

o Ready - Zerocopy NFS (Hirokazu Takahashi) 
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0204.1/0429.html

o Ready - High resolution timers (George Anzinger, etc.) 
http://high-res-timers.sourceforge.net/

o Ready - EVMS (Enterprise Volume Management System) (EVMS team) 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/evms

o Ready - Linux Kernel Crash Dumps (Matt Robinson, LKCD team) 
http://lkcd.sourceforge.net/

o Ready - Rewrite of the console layer (James Simmons) 
http://linuxconsole.sourceforge.net/

To the above can be added the following recent submission on the list:

o Ready- Kexec, luanch ELF format linux kernel from Linux (Eric W. Biederman)
http://lists.insecure.org/lists/linux-kernel/2002/Oct/6584.html

=================================================

That's currently it, that I'm aware of.  If your patch isn't on that list, and 
getting testing by people on linux-kernel (and getting a bunch of satisifed 
users to go "worked for me!" at it), then you should speak up and GET it on 
that list, or wait for the next development series.

When Linus comes back, at best he's going to give a thumbs up or thumbs down 
to each patch currently sitting there in front of him, and then it's on to 
the feature freeze.  He may not take any of them, or he may just take one or 
two.  But the best we can hope to do is present him with a nice (short) list 
of tested patches. (Remember, the less work Linus has to do, the higher the 
percentage of it that will actually get done.)

So everybody, try the above patches.  If they work for you, say so on this 
list.  It's no guarantee, but Linus has said endorsements from testers can 
make him feel more comfortable about a patch.  Possibly we can collect a list 
of names of people for whom a patch "worked for me", to add to the list.

If your patch isn't on the list, speak out now.  Better yet, post a URL to the 
latest version.  It's "show me the code" time.  (Yes, Hans Reiser, this means 
you. :)  There are still 7 days till the end of Linus's cruise, but that's 
not much time to get guinea pigs to publicly pipe up with a hearty "AOL!" of 
support for your work...

Again, some of the things on this list won't make it into 3.0.  It's just 
candidates.  But everything that is NOT on this list in about 7 days is 
probably going to become 3.1 material by default.

Speak now, or till 3.1 hold your peace...

Rob

P.S.  If somebody wants to put together a tree integrating some or all of the 
above, ala Folk/Wolk, it might be useful for testing purposes.  Good idea to 
find conflicts now, eh?