Summary
- Linux 7.0 rc6 reverses rc5's calm, with many small fixes returning.
- No major bugs are present, but many minor fixes erode confidence in the release.
- Linus is proceeding as normal for now, but the state of next week's release candidate may trigger a delay.
A week ago, all seemed well on the Linux 7.0 front. While the first few release candidates were looking a little spotty in terms of bugs, the fifth release candidate finally calmed down, and Linus Torvald himself said that the operating system was looking better.
Fast-forward to today, and unfortunately, it looks like that positive trend was short-lived. Linus confirmed today that the latest release candidate has resumed the trend of having more patches than usual, but he feels confident about continuing development without delaying Linux 7.0's release.
Linus Torvald says Linux 7.0 "doesn't want to calm down"
It's not playing nicely this time around
As reported by Phoronix, Linus Torvald has posted about the state of the Linux 7.0 rc6 build. If you're not in the loop, Linux usually goes through several rounds of release candidate builds to iron out bugs before it's released. Usually, when a version has a pretty quiet series of release candidates that don't get many patches, it means the foundation is pretty solid. Conversely, if there's a flurry of patches during the release candidate phases, it usually signals something wrong, and may justify delaying the release so that things calm down again.
Linux 7.0's first few release candidates had higher-than-normal patches, hinting that something wasn't quite right. Release candidate five calmed down, and things looked as if they would plateau. Now, release candidate six is here, and Linus reveals that the last one was a fluke:
It turns out that rc5 finally starting to calm things down this release cycle was a mirage - with rc6 we're back to many more fixes than are normal for this time in the release.
It's not like anything in here looks particularly alarming, but the fact that the rc's this release has been pretty consistently bigger than normal doesn't exactly give me the warm and fuzzies.
And it's not because the merge window was particularly big: rc1 was in fact pretty average in number of commits. It's just the rc's that have more small fixes than is the norm.
Much like the previous Linux 7.0 release candidates, the sixth one didn't reveal any huge issues with the operating system; most of the fixes were pretty minor. It's the fact that there was a lot of 'pretty minor' stuff that's making Linus feel unsure about the release. Because the changes aren't dramatic, Linus doesn't want to delay things just yet. However, given that next week is the final release candidate, he gives "no promises" that he won't pull the trigger then.
