Kernel Log: Linux-staging branch will help with integration; Linux kernel 2.6.25.6 and 2.6.26-rc6

Greg Kroah-Hartman has started the linux-staging kernel series. It is not intended directly for end-users, but rather is meant to help collect new drivers and extensions, as well as others administered independently of the kernel, while developers work on getting the code ready for integration. But unlike linux-next, which prepares drivers and extensions for integration into the upcoming development cycle, linux-staging is intended for features intended for integration in the long-term. Until now, there hasn't been a subsystem for this.

In his email announcement Kroah-Hartman sketches out his rationale and goals and sets up some ground rules. He points out that the tree is not intended as a place to correct or overhaul existing code, but to develop new features, drivers, or file systems ("this is not a tree for bugfixes or rewrites of existing kernel code, this should be for new features, drivers, and file systems"). He narrows down further by stating that linux-staging is no place for code that groups of developers are already actively working on – the Reiser4 file system, for instance, which has been administered independently of the kernel for years, has no place in Linux staging. The developer tree is also no place to unload code in the hopes that other developers can get it in shape for integration into the official kernel.

Linux staging is a quilt series available in a Git depot and currently contains patches for VIA hardware, a few USB drivers, Novell's Novfs (Novell Netware Filesystem), and others. The coming months should show whether linux-staging will be helpful in practice and whether it will be used in the long run for its intended purpose. Kroah-Hartman had planned to incorporate linux-staging into linux-next, but the latter is actually only meant for new features intended for integration into the Linux version following the upcoming release. Although the linux-next administrator is still considering whether to incorporate linux-staging.

After kernel developers closed security holes in Linux kernel 2.6.25.5 a few days ago, they followed it up a short time later by releasing version 2.6.25.6. The new version corrects a number of small problems in the Linux kernel and its drivers; some of the drivers are now responsible for hardware that had not been directly supported before. Chris Wright does not explicitly mention any security problems in the release email. However, the first post in the LWN.net forum comments that the patch in the commit entitled "cpufreq: fix null object access on Transmeta CPU" does in fact correct a critical problem. Chris Wright points out in an LKML discussion that the commit clearly did not address a security problem. Otherwise, he would have indicated it in the release email and called more emphatically on users to install the new version.

Linus Torvalds released 2.6.26-rc6, the new main development branch pre-update and as is his custom, albeit at irregular intervals, has given it a new name: Rotary Wombat. In his announcement of the sixth pre-release of linux 2.6.26, Torvalds encouraged Linux users to try it out, since kernel developers had remedied some problems since 2.6.26 was first launched ("Give it a try, we should have a few less regressions once more"). In the message he did not mention a release date for 2.6.26 – a few days ago he wrote that 2.6.26-rc7 could be the final pre-release.. But the last published list of errors found in the pre-releases of 2.6.26 contained numerous known bugs.

On the X.org scene there are currently a number of little improvements. Adam Jackson, release manager for X.org version 7.4 originally slated for completion in late April, provided a status overview of the next version of X.org on a mailing list, which offers hope that X.org 7.4 and X-Server 1.5 will soon be on the way. He and other developers have released new and updated drivers over the past few days. The mach64 and r128 drivers for older ATI graphics cards will now be maintained separately and are no longer components of the ati driver package. There is a new version of this package, which developers have named either 6.8.191 or 6.9.0rc1. All it contains now is the ati wrapper driver and the radeon graphics driver that supports both the old and the new Radeon graphics chips (r1xx-x6xx). The new version has a number of improvements for these chips: EXA composite support for the r3xx-, r4xx- and r5xx GPUs, as well as textured video for all GPUs supported by the driver.

X.org developers have also released new versions of the vesa and vmware graphics drivers. A month ago it still looked as if various X.org drivers would be based in future on TTM (Translation Table Maps), developed for the most part by Tungsten Graphics, but now Intel developers are planning to transition to their in-house alternative, GEM (Graphics Execution Manager). Intel developers want to remove the recently integrated TTM code from the graphics driver as soon as version 2.4 and completely switch to the less complicated GEM, which, at first, will only be used in the Intel graphics driver – see also the article on LWN.net entitled GEM v. TTM.

Kernel Log in brief:

• The GCC Project released version 4.3.1 of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC); next week GCC developers will meet at the GCC & GNU Toolchain Developers' Summit
• Willy Tarreau released Linux version 2.4.36.6, which fixes one of the bugs that version 2.6.25.5 fixed in the 2.6 series.
• Yoann Padioleau has released a GIT depot, containing all of the available versions of Linux in the main development branch since Linux 0.01; this enables closer analysis of the development history.
• Neil Brown released version 2.6.7 of mdadm.
• Mark Lord recently released hdpram 8.8
• Sony developer Geoff Levand released PS3 Linux Distributor's Starter Kit 1.8

(trk)