Re: Kernel Version Explanation

From: Fao, Sean
Date: Tue May 31 2005 - 12:03:04 EST


Schneelocke wrote:

On 30/05/05, H. Peter Anvin <hpa@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


It looks to me like the word "stable" is overused on the main page
at www.kernel.org .


That's because there isn't an odd-number series right now.



Will there ever be one again (at least in the foreseeable future)?
We've had "Linus = stable, -mm = unstable" for a long time now, and it
seems pretty much official now that there won't be a 2.7 anytime soon.
The actual development of new features is happening in the relevant
maintainers' trees, anyway, so there simply seems to be no need for a
single highly development-oriented tree (like 2.5 was) anymore - quite
the contrary.



My understanding was that Linus eventually decided upon something in the middle. I understood that there still wouldn't be a 2.7.x branch (unless major changes occurred, which would severely risk breaking the stable tree). However, it was also my understanding that Linus would return to the even/odd version system; but, would do so in the rev. In other words, 2.6.even would be stable, while 2.6.odd would be development. I did, however, become slightly confused when I connected to http://www.kernel.org and noticed that the latest stable kernel was 2.6.11.11 because it's both odd and contains four version numbers rather than the three, which we've usually seen.

Hope that clears up what my confusion is.

Thank you,

--
Sean E. Fao

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