</li>
<li>
A <dfn>longterm</dfn> stable branch may be maintained by Greg or
- another developer beyond this period
+ another developer beyond this period (I look after 3.2)
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</ul>
</div>
+<div class="slide">
+ <h1>The stable update process (2)</h1>
+ <ul>
+ <li>
+ Stable branch maintainer sends pending changes to the mailing
+ list, the original authors, etc., for a time-limited period of
+ review and testing
+ <ul>
+ <li>
+ Although the changes have been accepted by Linus, some might
+ not be needed in a stable branch or might not work due to
+ missing dependencies
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ A fix might have been found to introduce a regression in
+ mainline, so should only be applied to the stable branch
+ along with a second fix for the regression
+ </li>
+ </ul>
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ All changes that passed review (and maybe some that were
+ added) are applied to the stable branch and the release is
+ tagged
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ Greg pushes the tag to kernel.org (possibly after pulling
+ from the other maintainer) which generates tarballs,
+ updates the front page, etc.
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ Maintainer announces the release, shortly followed by LWN
+ and other news media
+ </li>
+ </ul>
+</div>
+
+<div class="slide">
+ <h1>Distributions and stable updates</h1>
+ <ul>
+ <li>
+ Package maintainers want to get bug fixes without waiting for
+ the next release - particularly for security
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ Maintainers report bugs upstream, find and sometimes write
+ fixes, and stable updates are a way to share these fixes across
+ distributions
+ <ul>
+ <li>
+ Are you doing this? If not, what's stopping you?
+ </li>
+ </ul>
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ Distribution stable releases have a much longer support period
+ than kernel release cycle, but updating to every new Linus
+ release is too risky
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ So the longterm stable branches are very important for most
+ distributions with stable releases
+ </li>
+ </ul>
+</div>
+
+<div class="slide">
+ <h1>Coordinating longterm branches</h1>
+ <ul>
+ <li>
+ Linux 2.6.32 was chosen as the basis for RHEL 6, and other
+ distributions preparing a stable release in 2010 opted to do
+ the same
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ The 2.6.32.<var>y</var> longterm branch is the basis for kernel
+ packages in Debian 6.0, SLE11 SP1 and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and
+ has over 3,500 changes
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ Other longterm branches have not been quite as widely used or as
+ active - maybe because release schedules didn't align as well
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ Do package maintainers expect/want there to be a longterm stable
+ branch for the kernel version in a stable release?
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ Should we be coordinating more explicitly to ensure that this
+ happens?
+ </li>
+ <li>
+ Would you be prepared to maintain such a branch at kernel.org?
+ </li>
+ </ul>
+</div>
+
<div class="slide">
<h1>Credits</h1>
<ul>