Ubuntu Intrepid kernel open for business (almost)

[Tim Gardner]

Tim Gardner wrote:
> Tim Gardner wrote:
>> I've started a git repository for the Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex kernel:
>>
>> git://kernel.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-intrepid
>>
>> Intrepid is based on the recently released 2.6.25 kernel and is a work
>> in progress. I'm currently working through and applying the SAUCE
>> patches from Hardy, at least those that still make sense. I'll make an
>> announcement later this week when I think its ready for x86/x86_64
>> building and testing. Once I can build all flavours I'll begin rebasing
>> against the upstream kernel, nearly as frequently as Linus updates his
>> tree. This process will continue until we decide which kernel and stable
>> tree to settle on. I think it will almost surely be 2.6.26.
>>
>> Note that I said rebase, not merge. The prevailing opinion (with which I
>> agree) is that rebasing is evil if you are sharing the repository.
>> However, the one important benefit of rebasing is that it _does_
>> preserve the commit SHA1 values from Linus' tree. This means that when
>> making a LaunchPad report do not reference a SHA1 commit ID that is
>> unique to Intrepid because it _will_ change on the next rebase. Only
>> commit IDs from Linus' tree remain constant.
>>
>> The Intrepid development cycle will also be a good opportunity to make
>> use of the daily kernel build infrastructure that was developed for
>> Hardy, but was never turned on. I'll make an announcement when that gets
>> cranked up.
>>
>> The Intrepid kernel is a straight clone of Linus' tree. However, there
>> are lots of little changes to the Hardy kernel that we want to carry
>> forward, SAUCE patches not withstanding. The first thing I did was to do
>> a merge of the 2.6.25 kernel into a temporary Hardy tree, resolve the
>> 147 conflicts, then diffed the merged Hardy tree against the clean
>> 2.6.25 tree. There are lots of cosmetic differences which, though minor,
>> are going to cause confusion in the future. Its one of the main reasons
>> I chose to start Intrepid from a clean tree rather then a merged tree
>> (besides having some ugly rebase issues). There are also some
>> substantial diffs related to AppArmor. We need to decide if the security
>> regime for Intrepid is AppArmor or SMACK.
>>
>> The other benefit of weeding through the merged Hardy v.s. clean 2.6.25
>> diff is that it points out where we have been negligent in getting minor
>> patches published upstream, e.g., quirks, black listings, etc. I'll be
>> generating a bunch of patches that should go to the stable kernel as
>> well as upstream.
>>
>> There is some good information about what is happing in the 2.6.25
>> kernel at:
>>
>> http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Linux_Weather_Forecast
>> and
>> http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_25
>>
>> As you can see, there is some pretty cool stuff coming down the pipe.
>> Its gonna be a busy summer.
>>
>> rtg
> 
> I pretty much have all of the Hardy diffs merged into the Intrepid git
> repository. You can see the leftover differences at
> 
> http://people.ubuntu.com/~rtg/intrepid-merge-diffs.txt
> 
> A note about SAUCE patches - It used to be that we used the SAUCE
> specifier in the commit log to denote a patch that will never go
> upstream, e.g., a special sauce patch. However, especially with
> Intrepid, there are no (or very few) patches that couldn't go upstream.
> So, I've changed the semantics of SAUCE to mean 'any patch that modifies
> kernel sources or Kconfig'. That will help distinguish administrative
> commits from real source patches.
> 
> I'll be working throughout the Intrepid development cycle to get as many
> of the SAUCE patches accepted upstream as possible. Hopefully by start
> the 9.04 development cycle there will be far fewer SAUCE patches that
> need to be ported.
> 
> Now, on to boot testing and LUM.
> 
> rtg

A bootable 2.6.25 based Intrepid kernel can be found at my PPA:
https://edge.launchpad.net/~timg-tpi/+archive. Intrepid-lum is
forthcoming (today or tomorrow) for those of you that need firmware for
your wireless devices, etc.

rtg
-- 
Tim Gardner tim.gardner at ubuntu.com