Re: [RFC] Kernel version numbering scheme change

Alex Howells
2008-10-20T18:56:00Z

Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> Not that I care one way or the other. It's just that I don't see how
> your response bears any relationship with the point Greg made. It's
> just a distraction. We're talking about how to label releases, not
> about guessing the release date of a kernel months ahead. One you
> label it, it stays that way.

Greg,

I do agree with you that kernel numbering is becoming increasingly
cumbersome now the numbers are becoming larger, and a spreadsheet is
becoming a handy tool for tracking all this release information.

I'm honestly not sold on any of the naming schemes proposed thusfar, but
since I can't come up with a magic solution, I'll shut up about that!

What I'd love to see any changes integrate would be a simple way to spot
-stable releases in the version number (ie: 2.6.16, 2.6.27, those
maintained for a "long" time and hopefully by 2.6.16.50+ quite 'bug
free') versus the rest of releases sent out on a more regular basis.

I'll immediately concede this is probably of minimal benefit to
distribution maintainers who're actively following LKML and development
in general, but there is a big community of folks out there using
vanilla kernel.org sources for their own needs who, like me, probably
find it difficult/frustrating to pick a kernel version these days.

Does anyone have a suggestion how that could be accomplished?

Alex