Winter break shutdown plan

Hi!

tl;dr net-next will be closed Dec 23rd - Jan 1st (incl.)

Last year the winter holidays fell right after the v6.3 merge window. We used this as an opportunity to extend the net-next shutdown over the winter and new year's celebrations. The concept of shutting down -next development seems to have overwhelming support, the real question is whether to shut down for one or two weeks, rather than whether to shut down at all.

The timing of the merge window is not as lucky this time. We will have to do a "mid-cycle shutdown". net-next will "close" for feature development, refactoring, etc. Because some code will exist in net-next only, however, net-next will remain open for fixes. A bit confusing, but hopefully we all understand what a fix is ;) Maybe a better way to phrase the shutdown this time would be "fixes only" rather than "net-next is closed".

Regarding timing - we did a small poll among developers and/or attendees of the bi-weekly call and the conclusion seems to be that we should shut down on Dec 23rd (Saturday) and reopen on Jan 2nd. Two-week shutdown had some support but it's hard to know whether to fit the extra week before Christmas or after New Year or to split it...

Depending on the urgency and volume of fixes we hope to also skip the PR to Linus on Dec 28th.

Hopefully the merge window for v6.8 will open on Jan 7th or 14th, giving us at least a week to settle any -next code which is ready after the break.

As always during net-next closures RFC posting of net-next code are not be discouraged.

Just wanted to remind bpf developers that bpf-next is always open.

The patches will be reviewed and applied as usual. (maybe a bit slower during the holidays). BPF CI will keep testing, etc.

This is a gentle reminder that the netdev winter shutdown is approaching.

Please remember then during the shutdown only fixes (for both trees) will be accepted.

Please also don't rush out of the door any pending feature before the shutdown :)

A nice winter holiday to all the people out there!

See you next year,

Paolo

Just FYI - my current plan is that -rc7 will happen this Saturday (because I still follow the Finnish customs of Christmas _Eve_ being the important day, so Sunday I'll be off), and then if anything comes in that week - which it will do, even if networking might be offline - I'll do an rc8 the week after.

Then, unless anything odd happens, the final 6.7 release will be Jan 7th, and so the merge window for 6.8 will open Jan 8th.

So that's the plan, and it doesn't look like there's anything strange going on that would cause me to delay any further, so it's pretty likely to hold. Knock wood.

Linus