Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758341AbaDIJSx (ORCPT ); Wed, 9 Apr 2014 05:18:53 -0400 Received: from nbd.name ([46.4.11.11]:41127 "EHLO nbd.name" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932358AbaDIJSv (ORCPT ); Wed, 9 Apr 2014 05:18:51 -0400 Message-ID: <53451077.2030102@openwrt.org> Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2014 11:18:47 +0200 From: Felix Fietkau User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.4.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Luis R. Rodriguez" , "backports@vger.kernel.org" CC: "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" , Greg Kroah-Hartman , Jiri Slaby , Mauro Carvalho Chehab Subject: Re: Bumping required kernels to 3.0 for Linux backports ? References: In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 1.6 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 2014-04-09 03:03, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote: > Folks, > > we have a age old dance of random parties, in particular the embedded > folks, ending up with random ancient kernels on embedded devices. I've > tried to carefully document a few ideas on why and how I believe we > can make automatic kernel backporting scale [0] and part of this will > be to try to bring consensus about a unified front to persuade users, > partners, customers, whatever, to be at least on a kernel listed as > supported on kernel.org. Today we backport down to the last 30 > kernels, from 2.6.24 up to 3.14 and while this is manageable right now > I expect the number of supported drivers and features to keep > increasing (I've stopped counting). I am very aware of the reasons to > support a slew of old kernels, but its nothing but our own fault for > not educating enough about the importance on upgrading. I realize this > is an age old issue, but since I think we need scale backports and > wish to remove older kernels from it fast, I wanted to see if any > folks might have ideas on what can help here other than saying, 'if > you use Linux backports, your drivers will be automatically backported > and supported'. > > To start off -- what's the *last* kernel you realistically need for > your users to use backports right now? Is it really 2.6.25? Would > anyone kick and scream if for the backports-3.15 release try take > things up to support only down to least 3.0 *right now* ? > > [0] http://www.do-not-panic.com/2014/04/automatic-linux-kernel-backporting-with-coccinelle.html 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. I'm looking forward to getting rid of patches for older kernels that often get in the way when using various wireless-testing versions ;) - Felix -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/