Ubuntu Intrepid kernel open for business (almost)

[Tim Gardner]

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
-- 
Tim Gardner tim.gardner at ubuntu.com