Re: 2.4 & 2.6 kernels, should sarge be 2.6 only at least for powerpc ?
On Wed, 2004-06-30 at 03:51, Sven Luther wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Well, nobody seemed to care or comment on this, so let's take this to a
> wider audience.
>
> Christoph has recently told me that he doesn't care about 2.4, and even
> benh has mentioned to me that 2.4 support for powerpc will be going away
> in the near term (well, not the eact words, but you get my meaning). And
> i guess that Jens also is only interested on 2.6 kernels, even though he
> is comaintainer of the 2.4 kernels too.
Well... That isn't really what I said ;) What I said is that I don't
have time to actively maintain the PowerMac support in 2.4, that is make
it evolve & support newer machines. That doesn't mean that PPC will be
going away from 2.4 ;)
> So, i am seriously considering dropping all 2.4 powerpc kernels, and
> going with 2.6 only, and would like to get feedback both from
> debian-kernel as well as debian-powerpc, feedback i didn't get in the
> past.
>
> Ah, and i am seriously considering dropping support for apus from the
> kernels (and thus debian-installer). I believe that they are only a
> handfull of apus users left, and those are happily running self built
> 2.2 kernels. Furthermore, i have some evidence that not only where the
> debian apus kernels never tried on apus, but also that there is big
> chance they don't even work. I don't have apus hardware anymore, so ...
>
> So, please feedback is welcome.
>
> Friendly,
>
> Sven Luther
>
> On Sun, Jun 27, 2004 at 09:55:46PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> > On Sun, Jun 27, 2004 at 05:29:38PM +0200, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > > There's a few reports against 2.4 kernel that are fixed in 2.6 and are
> > > unlikely to get in 2.4 every (Examples: #146956 or #130217). How should
> > > we deal with them in the BTS?
> >
> > The real question here is to ask ourselves what is our option for the
> > sarge release. Will we release with 2.4 as default, which is the track
> > we are on right now, or will we release with 2.6 as default, and keep
> > 2.4 about only as backup in case there is a real problem with 2.4.
> >
> > There are both advantages and problems in going with 2.6 :
> >
> > advantage: it is the future, has some features and fixes which will
> > not be backported to 2.4, and moreover many of our new kernel team
> > have no interest whatsoever for 2.4, which includes benh and Christoph
> > among others.
> >
> > problems: not all architectures support 2.6 yet (well, most of them do
> > not), and moreover, our userland has probably not been fully tested
> > with 2.6 all that much.
> >
> > So, the real question, for those arches which do support 2.6, and if
> > those bug reports you mention are problems only on those arches where
> > 2.6 is supported, and if we decide to go for 2.6, then it should be ok
> > to mark those bugs as wontfix, and put a note that it is fixed in 2.6.
> >
> > If on the other hand we decide to go with 2.4 by default, or those bugs
> > affect arches which are not ready to go with 2.6, then not only it is
> > not ok to close them (even if our new kernel team doesn't care for 2.4),
> > but we should either backport the fix, or find another way to close it
> > before the sarge release.
> >
> > Now, about going with 2.6, i personnally would maybe like to go with 2.6
> > eclusively for all the powerpc subarches, altough i am not entirely sure
> > we are ready for this. For this to happen we need to achieve the
> > following :
> >
> > Have a kernel bootable on all subarches :
> >
> > -> yaboot using newworld pmac & chrp-rs6k : Ok, but need testing on
> > chrp-rs6k
> > -> mkvmlinuz generated chrp : Need to find a solution for the
> > generation of the vmlinuz image, should be easy, once we agree on a
> > way to go.
> > -> oldworld pmac : We need to shrink the size of the kernel so it
> > fits on a miboot floppy and test it. This should be best achieved by
> > modularizing the pmac-ide driver, and other pmac stuff which could
> > be modularized. Benh said he scarcely has time for it, and Christoph
> > promised he would have a look.
> > -> prep : renamed pplus in the kernel code. We need to add mkvmlinuz
> > code for this one, not sure about the others, we did not support
> > them, but it should be possible to add support to mkvmlinuz easily
> > enough. Testing on those subarches is needed though.
> > -> apus : Well, a 2.6 port could be done and tested, using a
> > conditionally applied patch or something such, or merging the
> > patches. That said, since there are at most 5-10 users left, and
> > those are using their own kernels, maybe we should drop kernel
> > support for them.
> >
> > Another point would be to test the 2.6 debian-installer on all those
> > subarches, and fi the problems if they appear.
> >
> > If all this does happen before the sarge release, and if the userland
> > issues are solved, then i would strongly recomend going for 2.6 for
> > powerpc at least, especially as the members of the debian kernel team
> > with interest in powerpc care very little about 2.4 kernels.
> >
> > Friendly,
> >
> > Sven Luther
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-kernel-REQUEST@lists.debian.org
> > > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-kernel-REQUEST@lists.debian.org
> > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
> >
--
Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
Reply to: