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Shouldn't they have left it for 6.0?
by theteapot 4y ago
Shouldn't they have left it for 6.0?
- mhitza 4y agoKernel doesn't adhere to a SemVer policy
- theteapot 4y agoMaybe they should. Maybe, they, should.
- SAI_Peregrinus 4y agoNaw. Kernel version number increases. Can't be more than 255 in any field, except the EXTRAVERSION which is a string. Kernel version numbering is exposed in the userspace ABI, so changing it to have meaning would be a breaking change for no substantial benefit. This[1] LWN article is a good overview of the history. Effectively the major gets incremented when the minor gets to 20 and Linus runs out of fingers & toes to keep track. [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/871989/ https://lwn.net/Articles/871989/
- theteapot 4y ago> Can't be more than 255 in any field, except the EXTRAVERSION which is a string. Kernel version numbering is exposed in the userspace ABI, so changing it to have meaning would be a breaking change. Sounds like they should leave this change for 6.0 then.
- SAI_Peregrinus 4y agoWhy? The kernel version number has no meaning, other than to provide an ordering of releases.
- theteapot 4y agoIn 6.0 it will.
- mrlonglong 4y agoHow many digits does a penguin have?
- ufo 4y agoI believe it's 14. (Birds feet have 4 toes and their wings have 3 fingers)
- charcircuit 4y ago>Can't be more than 255 in any field They can just change the max. It's not that big of a deal.
- SAI_Peregrinus 4y agoNo, it's one byte per field (except EXTRAVERSION, which is a string). That's part of the userspace ABI, so it can't change without extremely good reason (critical security issue that can't be mitigated in another way).