linux-kernel - Re: Evolution of kernel size

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Message-ID: <20111110154003.GA14012@elliptictech.com>
Date:	Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:40:03 -0500
From:	Nick Bowler <nbowler@...iptictech.com>
To:	Jérôme Pinot <ngc891@...il.com>
Cc:	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Evolution of kernel size

On 2011-11-11 00:15 +0900, Jérôme Pinot wrote:
> On 11/10/11 09:59, Nick Bowler wrote:
> > On 2011-11-10 23:33 +0900, Jérôme Pinot wrote:
> > > I took some time to make a graph of the evolution of the size of the
> > > linux kernel tar.bz2 since version 1.0 till 3.1 (297 releases).
> > > It doesn't count the stable branches (2.6.x.y).
> > > 
> > > Impressive, it's mostly exponential.
> > > If dev keeps same pace, we should break the 100MB at
> > > linux 3.19.
> > > 
> > > You can get the graph on my blog, I provide the data and the
> > > gnuplot batch file for graphing/fitting:
> > > http://ngc891.blogdns.net/?p=92 
> > > 
> > > It may interest some people :-)
> > 
> > What scale did you use for the horizontal axis?  I see numbers assigned
> > to each version in your gnuplot file, but no indication of how you came
> > up with them.
> 
> It's just the release count, one step for one release.
> 
> Some release are missing, mostly at the very beginning, I didn't find
> tarball for them but it doesn't matter much for the shape of the curve.

The problem with this is that the releases were not made at fixed
intervals.  2.6.0 -> 3.0 represents more than double the amount of
development time as 2.4 -> 2.6, yet they get roughly the same amount
of horizontal space on your plot.

I think it would be much more interesting to scale by release dates, so
that the gap between releases is proportional to the time between them.
I suspect you'll see a very different shape.

Furthermore, looking at the raw data, you gave 2.4.37 (released in 2008)
a lower release number than 2.6.0 (released in 2003), which seems odd.

Cheers,
-- 
Nick Bowler, Elliptic Technologies (http://www.elliptictech.com/)
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