Zack's Kernel News

Zack's Kernel News

Article from Issue 155/2013
Author(s):

Chronicler Zack Brown reports on the latest news, views, dilemmas, and developments within the Linux kernel community.

Submitting Fixes to Various Trees

Greg Kroah-Hartman revealed a schism in the development process when he complained that he had more than 170 patches marked for the stable series that he couldn't apply because they hadn't gotten into Linus's tree yet.

One of the rules for the stable tree is that it only accepts patches after they are already in the main tree. This process may seem odd, but it's intended to prevent too much divergence between the trees. The thinking is also that anything good enough for the stable tree is good enough for the main tree, and the way to ensure that it actually goes into the main tree is to make that an explicit requirement.

Linus's development process has evolved quite a bit over the years, but at the moment it seems to start with a brief "merge window," during which time developers submit their patches. Then, it goes through a series of stabilizing release candidates – from -rc1 to -rc7 or -rc8 or thereabouts. After that, Linus releases a new official kernel version, and the process begins again.

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