So when I released 3.17, I said that I’d extend the merge window to
three weeks due to travel.
I clearly lied.
Because here we are, the usual two weeks later, and I’ve already
pushed out 3.18-rc1.
What happened is that not only did I merge actively despite travels –
I was out of communication just for a couple of days (almost, but not
entirely, due to flights – the hotel in DÃsseldorf lost all internet
for a day too). But perhaps more importantly, people seem to have
aggressively sent in their pull requests, because rc1 contains more
than linux-next did a couple of days after 3.17.. So holding it up
another week just seems pointless.
That said, I realize that people might have taken my statements at
face value, and planned with that in mind. I hate it when I get pull
requests really late in the merge window, but having closed it as per
the regular schedule, I also understand that somebody might have
planned on sending their pull request a bit later. It’s ok. Grovel a
bit, and explain what’s up, and you can almost certainly guilt me into
taking stuff.
Also, maybe I just missed something due to jetlag (hmm. yes, let’s
call it “jetlag”, that sounds so much better than “core incompetence
and bad planning”), so if you feel unfairly overlooked, send me a note
explaining how I’ve unfairly wronged you.
There is also at least one pull request that I am hoping to get asap
and planning on still pulling, ie I’m very much still hoping to get
overlayfs finally merged. But there were a few last-minute questions
from Al. Assuming that all works out, that’s an expected late pull.
Not worth holding up the rc1 release for one known straggler, though.
So there you have it. The merge window is closed, but with room for
excuses and possible missed requests. As usual, the shortlog is much
too big to post (core stats: roughly 74% drivers, 10% architecture
updates, the rest networking, filesystems, core kernel, documentation,
include files, tool updates…), and the appended is my “mergelog”
which as usual credits the people I pulled from, which is not at all
necessarily the same as the people writing the code.
Go forth and test,
Linus