Crunch time -- Final merge candidates for 3.0 (the list).

Okay, Linus has left for the Linux Lunacy Cruise (see www.geekcruises.com), which ends october 27. When he gets back, he's implied that there will be EXACTLY ONE more set of last minute merges before we switch over to the 3.0-pre (or 2.6-pre) series. Those of you waiting for the last minute: this is it.

There are people patch-hoovering while Linus is off "lecturing" on a boat in the carribean, but we don't know who those are, so that's not useful. What IS useful is knowing what the candidate patches are. Not bug fixes, but new features with one final shot at 2.5.45.

The October 19 entry from Guillaume Boissiere's 2.5 status list
(http://kernelnewbies.org/status/) has the following entries in the "ready for merging" state:

=====================================================

o in -ac PCMCIA Zoom video support (Alan Cox)
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0203.1/0326.html

o in -ac Device mapper for Logical Volume Manager (LVM2) (LVM2 team)
http://www.sistina.com/products_lvm.htm

o in -mm VM large page support (Many people)
http://lse.sourceforge.net/

o in -mm Page table sharing (Daniel Phillips, Dave McCracken)
http://www.geocrawler.com/mail/msg.php3?msg_id=7855063&list=35
(or possibly here:)
http://lists.insecure.org/lists/linux-kernel/2002/Oct/6446.html

o Ready - Build option for Linux Trace Toolkit (LTT) (Karim Yaghmour)
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0204.1/0832.html

o Ready - Dynamic Probes (dprobes team)
http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/linux/projects/dprobes

o Ready - Zerocopy NFS (Hirokazu Takahashi)
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0204.1/0429.html

o Ready - High resolution timers (George Anzinger, etc.)
http://high-res-timers.sourceforge.net/

o Ready - EVMS (Enterprise Volume Management System) (EVMS team)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/evms

o Ready - Linux Kernel Crash Dumps (Matt Robinson, LKCD team)
http://lkcd.sourceforge.net/

o Ready - Rewrite of the console layer (James Simmons)
http://linuxconsole.sourceforge.net/

To the above can be added the following recent submission on the list:

o Ready- Kexec, luanch ELF format linux kernel from Linux (Eric W. Biederman)
http://lists.insecure.org/lists/linux-kernel/2002/Oct/6584.html

=================================================

That's currently it, that I'm aware of. If your patch isn't on that list, and getting testing by people on linux-kernel (and getting a bunch of satisifed users to go "worked for me!" at it), then you should speak up and GET it on that list, or wait for the next development series.

When Linus comes back, at best he's going to give a thumbs up or thumbs down to each patch currently sitting there in front of him, and then it's on to the feature freeze. He may not take any of them, or he may just take one or two. But the best we can hope to do is present him with a nice (short) list of tested patches. (Remember, the less work Linus has to do, the higher the percentage of it that will actually get done.)

So everybody, try the above patches. If they work for you, say so on this list. It's no guarantee, but Linus has said endorsements from testers can make him feel more comfortable about a patch. Possibly we can collect a list of names of people for whom a patch "worked for me", to add to the list.

If your patch isn't on the list, speak out now. Better yet, post a URL to the latest version. It's "show me the code" time. (Yes, Hans Reiser, this means you. :) There are still 7 days till the end of Linus's cruise, but that's not much time to get guinea pigs to publicly pipe up with a hearty "AOL!" of support for your work...

Again, some of the things on this list won't make it into 3.0. It's just candidates. But everything that is NOT on this list in about 7 days is probably going to become 3.1 material by default.

Speak now, or till 3.1 hold your peace...

Rob

P.S. If somebody wants to put together a tree integrating some or all of the above, ala Folk/Wolk, it might be useful for testing purposes. Good idea to find conflicts now, eh?

We will send Reiser4 out soon, probably around the 27th.

Hans

LTT has seen a number of changes since the posting above. Mainly, we've followed the recommendations of quite a few folks from the LKML. Here are some highlights summarizing the changes:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=103491640202541&w=2
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=103423004321305&w=2
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=103247532007850&w=2

The latest patch is available here:
http://opersys.com/ftp/pub/LTT/ExtraPatches/patch-ltt-linux-2.5.44-vanilla-021019-2.2.bz2
Use this patch with version 0.9.6pre2 of the user tools:
http://opersys.com/ftp/pub/LTT/TraceToolkit-0.9.6pre2.tgz

Karim

===================================================
Karim Yaghmour
[email protected]
Embedded and Real-Time Linux Expert
===================================================

Cool. I just grabbed the URL off of G.B's list (I'm not even going to TRY to spell his name again just now). it would be nice if the october 19 link was up as soon as the "latest" link was up: right now I can't post a URL to it in a way that will remain referring to what I was talking about after he posts the next update. :(

Another thing I've noticed somebody still hoping to shoehorn into 2.5 is Roman Zippel's new kernel configuration system, which is here:

Announcement:
http://lists.insecure.org/lists/linux-kernel/2002/Oct/6898.html
Code:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~zippel/lc/

That was listed as a "beta" on the status list, I guess at version 1.1, it has now been promoted. (Anything else on the beta that's still trying to make it into 2.5? The 27th is sunday, meaning Linus should be back at transmeta on monday. Assuming 2.4.45 ships on the 31st, that would be the following thursday...)

Ted Tso has also been posting new ext2/ext3 code with extended attributes and access control lists.

Announcement:
http://lists.insecure.org/lists/linux-kernel/2002/Oct/6787.html
Code (chooe your poison):
bk://extfs.bkbits.net/extfs-2.5-update
http://thunk.org/tytso/linux/extfs-2.5

Apparently generic ACL support went into 2.5.3 (the status list again), but I guess it wasn't added to EXT2. I suppose this makes this a good candidate for inclusion then. :)

So, 11 items from the 2.5 status list (in -aa, in -mm, and "ready"), plus kexec, kernelconfig, and ACL for EXT3. I believe this brings the total number of pending patchsets still hoping for 2.5 inclusion to 14.

I can repost the full list if nobody beats me to it, but I think I'll wait to see who else pipes up first. :)

Rob

I belive that the ext3 EA+ACL stuff is now in -mm.

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2resize/

Query: is the stuff in -mm guaranteed to make it into Linus's tree? Or is it another variant of -ac and -dj, from which Linus pulls what he wants?

The first seems HIGHLY unlikely. But is nice to know anyway... :)

Rob

I doubt it. However, being included in "-mm" or "-ac" is one step closer to being included in "" than just being a random patch/cset on the internet...

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2resize/

Nope.

It's mainly there for the other VM/MM/IO developers to integrate against.

Also for getting their more experimental work more testing and exposure.

Also for getting external testing of the performance work which is going into it.

Also for maintainers of other architectures to pick up breakage before things break.

I prefer to only send things which I understand and have tested. So that excludes, say, dcache-rcu and the EA/xattr patches. I did send ext3-htree, but it had big "I haven't tested this" labels all over it.

Well, maybe it makes sense to reduce flow of non-features patches for a couple of days to let Linus feel less buried in email? I think VM tweaking and such... It could be done after Linus say what got in and what did not.

Although I doubt we can keep akpm/acme/davem/etc/etc/etc from hacking, maybe there's a way to block SMTP traffic from them? ;) (just kidding. They develop features as well)
--
vda

It would also be nice to buy the dude his own private jet, but I'm not sure it's a practical suggestion in the short term. :)

Linus has already said he intends to read his mail with the "D" key when he gets back. The point of collating the pending feature list is to pluck stuff out of the mess, shake it off a bit, and present him with a nice menu to make choices from on his return.

Deciding not to include stuff is Linus's perogative. (More than that, it's more or less his JOB in kerneldom, acting as goalie for the main tree.) Once again, we're just trying to make sure nothing gets dropped because he didn't see it rather than because he saw it and went "no".

In the past half-hour, the MMU-less patch and unlimited groups support have been fielded as "ready for 2.5", although I haven't seen URLs to either yet. Add Rusty's three items and we're up to... 19? Plus Hans Reiser said reiser4 will be ready around the 27th, so that's 20.

I don't think half that many will make it into 2.5, but some of them are small, so...

Oh, and of course one more little item that only Linus can merge (speaking of small, yet still important):

The version number: is it 2.6 or 3.0?

So that's 21. :)

Rob

This is just device driver forward porting from the 2.4 kernel. While its a rather important and useful feature its impact on the kernel core is actually nil.