I probably should have (b)cc'd -devel on this one, sorry. -Ben ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2015 12:51:30 -0500 From: Benjamin Kaduk <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: [OpenAFS] On desupporting Linux 2.4
Hi all, Linux 2.4 is getting long in the tooth, and it is becoming clear that attempting to continue to support it is a drain on the scarce OpenAFS development resources which could be better used to modernize the codebase and implement security and performance improvements such as rxgk and fine-grained pthreaded locking. In particular, the threading library used by Linux 2.4, LinuxThreads, is not compliant to the POSIX (pthread) standard, and the non-standard behaviors are preventing improvements to OpenAFS such as http://gerrit.openafs.org/#change,6947 . Even attempting to retain the old OpenAFS behavior on systems with LinuxThreads and provide improved functionality for other systems seems to be beyond the available developer resources. When discussion on http://gerrit.openafs.org/#change,6947 began in 2012, it was claimed that dropping support for Linux 2.4 was premature at that time. It is now nearly three years later, and no progress has been made on that change in gerrit, because of the difficulty of dealing with LinuxThreads and Linux 2.4. As such, I propose that OpenAFS drop support for Linux 2.4 (and thus LinuxThreads) starting with the forthcoming 1.8 release. Because this is a substantial change, I invite comments from the community as to whether it is appropriate and acceptable to desupport Linux 2.4, and what the scope of the impact of such a change would be. Thank you, Ben Kaduk _______________________________________________ OpenAFS-info mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/openafs-info _______________________________________________ OpenAFS-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openafs.org/mailman/listinfo/openafs-devel
