Re: Linux 3.0-rc1

From: Valdis . Kletnieks
Date: Mon May 30 2011 - 16:50:18 EST


On Mon, 30 May 2011 20:33:29 -0000, Mustapha Rabiu said:
> Linus Torvalds <torvalds <at> linux-foundation.org> writes:
>
> >
> > Yay! Let the bikeshed painting discussions about version numbering
> > begin (or at least re-start).
> >
> > I decided to just bite the bullet, and call the next version 3.0. It
> > will get released close enough to the 20-year mark, which is excuse
> > enough for me, although honestly, the real reason is just that I can
> > no longe rcomfortably count as high as 40.
> >
>
> Unsurprising, however, congratulations on yet another major release!
> We applaud the fact that it'll be just as hideous as 2.6.x, without any
> new or modified features. Might you explain why you didn't just
> use 2.8.x ?
>
> Also, given that multiple people have asked for a handful of things
> to be merged into the kernel, re: security, I'm puzzled about how
> you managed to develop this self-styled 'alpha-male' based versioning
> scheme without addressing unsettling discrepancies such
> as /proc/pid/auxv, /proc/pid/stack and /proc/pid/syscall based
> info-leaks or slub cache merging, etc, all of which have been publicly
> discussed over varying periods of time, (circa ~2008)

We can come back and revisit those issues after we get done fixing
*all* the software that made a blind assumption that the kernel
release number matches '2\.[46]\.[0-9]+' (said assumption being
broken at *both* ends by a 3.0 release.

I have to agree with Linus on this one - if we're ruling out ABI-breaking
changes, we want to make this kernel release as little different as
we can.

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