Re: Bumping required kernels to 3.0 for Linux backports ?

[Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Wed, Apr 09, 2014 at 01:52:29PM -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 1:22 PM, Greg Kroah-Hartman
> <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 09, 2014 at 01:01:23PM -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> >> On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 12:12 PM, Greg Kroah-Hartman
> >> <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> >> > On Wed, Apr 09, 2014 at 11:28:55AM -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> >> >> On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 2:18 AM, Felix Fietkau <nbd@openwrt.org> wrote:
> >> >> > The oldest kernel in OpenWrt that we're still supporting with updates of
> >> >> > the backports tree is 3.3, so raising the minimum requirement to 3.0 is
> >> >> > completely fine with me.
> >> >>
> >> >> OK note that 3.3 is not listed on kernel.org as supported. I'm fine in
> >> >> carrying the stuff for those for now but ultimately it'd also be nice
> >> >> if we didn't even have to test the kernels in between which are not
> >> >> listed. This does however raise the question of how often a kernel in
> >> >> between a list of supported kernels gets picked up to be supported
> >> >> eventually. Greg, Jiri, do you happen to know what the likelyhood of
> >> >> that can be?
> >> >
> >> > I don't know of anything ever getting picked up after I have said it
> >> > would not be supported anymore.
> >>
> >> Great! How soon after a release do you mention whether or not it will
> >> be supported? Like say, 3.14, which was just released.
> >
> > I only mention it around the time that it would normally go end-of-life.
> >
> > For example, if 3.13 were to be a release that was going to be "long
> > term", I would only say something around the normal time I would be no
> > longer supporting it.  Like in 2-3 weeks from now.
> >
> > So for 3.14, I'll not say anything about that until 3.16-rc1 is out,
> > give or take a week or two.
> >
> >> Also, as of late are you aware any distribution picking an unsupported
> >> kernel for their next choice of kernel?
> >
> > Sure, lots do, as they don't line up with my release cycles (I only pick
> > 1 long term kernel to maintain each year).  Look at the Ubuntu releases
> > for examples of that.  Also openSUSE and Fedora (although Fedora does
> > rev their kernel pretty regularly) don't usually line up.  The
> > "enterprise" distros are different, but even then, they don't always
> > line up either (which is why Jiri is maintaining 3.12...)
> >
> > Hope this helps,
> 
> It does! Unless I don't hear any complaints then given that some
> distributions might choose a kernel in between and given also your
> great documented story behind the gains on trying to steer folks
> together on the 'ol 2.6.32 [0] and this now being faded, I'll be
> bumping backports to only support >= 3.0 soon, but we'll include all
> the series from 3.0 up to the latest. That should shrink compile /
> test time / support time on backports to 1/2.

Why 3.0?  That's not supported by anyone anymore for "new hardware", I'd
move to 3.2 if you could, as that's the Debian stable release that will
be maintained for quite some time yet:
	https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html

thanks,

greg k-h