[Ksummit-2012-discuss] [ATTEND] <ding> "Bring out your dead" <ding>...

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Friday 29 June 2012, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> No planning was involved. It was basically Linus saying "the 2.6 numbers
> are too high, lets reset". And it seems that's his plan for going to 4.0
> too. But if we can get Linus to say, we will switch to 4.0 after we hit
> 3.20 or so, then we can make plans for that release to dump old stuff.
> From what I recall, Linus doesn't want the major number to mean much of
> anything. No redesign of the system as other projects do at major number
> changes (Gnome anyone?). But the kernel will incrementally evolve to
> something different from one major version to the next.
> 
> But it shouldn't go against his ideas if we also remove our dirty
> laundry at these points. This will give plenty of warnings about what
> will be dumped, and if you really care about it, you better make
> yourself known and maintain it.
> 
> Perhaps a Linux legacy tree will make this idea irrelevant. But having a
> planned date to remove a bunch of rotting bits may help in dumping a lot
> of unneeded code.

I think the best time to remove stuff is after a longterm kernel
has branched off the mainline version. With 3.4 selected as the LTS
kernel, everything in there will still be around in a well-maintained
kernel for much longer than 3.5 or (probably) 3.6, so we can drop
a lot of stuff now, but once we get to 3.7 it might make more sense
to keep whatever legacy code we have until we have a 3.8 or 3.9 LTS
kernel.

	Arnd