So we've had a calm release so far, with most of the rc's up until now
smaller than average.
That changes with rc5, which is still pretty much in line with
historical data, but rather than being slightly on the small side, it
is slightly larger than average for this time in the release cycle.
And for once, this is not really a source of concern for me. Because
as mentioned last weekend for the rc4 release, the last rc was likely
smaller simply because that week hadn't seen any networking updates,
nor some of the usual driver pull requests.
So 5.7-rc5 is a bit larger than the last few rc5's have been - but it
was something I was expecting simply because of some pent-up pull
requests that came in this week rather than the week before.
And while being slightly larger than usual, it's by no means
outrageously so. It may have set a new record for number of non-merge
commits in the 5.x series, but it did so by one single measly commit:
300 commits in 5.7-rc5 vs 299 commits in 5.6-rc5 (while the average
for this time in the release cycle hovers just over 200).
So nothing in here looks all that worrisome. The diffstat looks fairly
nice and flat, and the slightly elevated commit count does seem to be
just the usual timing fluctuation.
The changes are spread out, with nothing really dominating. Drivers,
networking, arch updates, kvm, tooling, documentation.. A little bit
of everything, and nothing that looks outrageous.
We'll see what the next few weeks bring, but at least for now it all
feels normal, and like the 5.7 release is tracking well.
So please keep testing, and if you haven't dared a 5.7 pre-release
kernel yet, we're well into the "things look calm and safe to test"
time.
I dare you all to prove me wrong. Go ahead, make my day 😉
Linus
