linux-kernel - Re: Dropping non supported kernels for kernel backports ?

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Message-ID: <1367996104.8279.5.camel@jlt4.sipsolutions.net>
Date:	Wed, 08 May 2013 08:55:04 +0200
From:	Johannes Berg <johannes@...solutions.net>
To:	"Luis R. Rodriguez" <mcgrof@...not-panic.com>
Cc:	"backports@...r.kernel.org" <backports@...r.kernel.org>,
	"linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Dropping non supported kernels for kernel backports ?

On Tue, 2013-05-07 at 16:53 -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> Today the backports project provides support to backport down to
> 2.6.24 for some subsystems. While this is good for users in practice
> for development and maintenance this is quite a bit of overhead. Apart
> from older kernels there are also gaps in between stable releases that
> are not supported. For example 3.8 and 3.4 are supported but anything
> in between is not (3.5, 3.6, 3.7), but we still do support them on the
> backports project. At times this may mean a stable fix may get
> propagated onto a the linux-3.4.y branch but obviously not the the
> linux-3.5.y branch. If backporting expressing this becomes a bit
> complex and we have dealt with it. In short, its a pain.
> 
> I'd like to see what folks thought if we went ahead and *only*
> supported kernels listed on kernel.org as supported. This would help
> with the Linux kernel maintainer effort by also persuading users to
> upgrade to stable releases as well as educating around this.
> 
> If v3.10 backported releases are too soon to do this I propose we
> seriously consider it for v3.11 releases. Any thoughts?

I'm sure I'd still have to support other kernels random customers might
be on (customers, they don't always do the smart thing ;-) ). I could do
that myself of course, but then where would I stick the support patches?

Maybe we could do a compromise and drop support for no longer supported
kernels, but only a few years later? If we put the cutoff at 3 years now
we'd drop everything before 2.6.34, for example.

johannes

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