Hi Ben, Pulling in d-i on this, since they might be affected by this. If you know of a maintainer that would be similarly affected, let me know, so we can ask them as well.
Ben Hutchings:
> [...]
>
> For stretch, I would very much like to choose a kernel version for
> stretch that gets longterm maintenance by Greg Kroah-Hartman. That
> lasts 2 years from release, after which someone else (maybe me) can
> take over. I do not want to maintain 3 kernel longterm branches at a
> time, and there is consensus among the stable maintainers that it is
> undesirable to have more than one longterm branch started per year.
>
Noted.
> Greg's new policy is to pick the first Linus release in each year for
> longterm maintenance. The longterm branch for 2016 is based on Linux
> 4.4, released at the end of week 1 (10th January). By the time stretch
> is released, 4.4 will be quite old (the same problem squeeze and wheezy
> had, requiring many driver backports).
>
Would you prefer that we moved future freezes (i.e. Buster and later),
so we could always rely on Greg's branch? Not knowing Linux's LTS planning:
* Does Greg do an LTS *every* year? OR,
* is "each year for longterm maintenance" like Ubuntu's were they have
years without LTS?
> Based on the current 9 week upstream release cycle, the longterm branch
> for 2017 will presumably be based on Linux 4.10, released at the end of
> week 3 (22nd January 2017). That's well after the planned stretch
> freeze date so I don't see how it can be included.
>
Indeed that is a bit unfortunate. With the freeze date already
announced, I am very hesitant to move it.
> Can you suggest any way to resolve this?
>
@Kernel+d-i - What is your take on the following:
* How long will it take to have the new release ready?
- That is, the latency between the 22nd and us having it in unstable.
- How certain are we on the 22nd being the actual release date?
- [d-i]: How long will it take to have a d-i using the new linux
ready?
* How difficult/disruptive do you expect the migration to linux 4.10
will be?
- Is this something we can reasonably do within a month? 2 months?
- Can we plan ahead to reduce the time / issues? Maybe use
linux pre-releases?
- If we start this, is it in anyway reasonable to do a roll-back
within 2-3 weeks? (I am guessing "no", but I figured I'd ask.)
* If we were to stick with 4.4, what we will be missing out on?
- Are there any planned/known "must haves"?
- How long does Greg's LTS last? We would spend at least a year of
it before January 22nd 2017.
> (By the way, I haven't seen the stretch freeze dates announced
> anywhere; I only found them on a wiki page. A new "Bits from the
> release team" seems to be overdue.)
>
> Ben.
>
A bits is indeed overdue. The announcement happened in the Release Team
talk at DebConf15.
Thanks,
~Niels
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