Linus Torvalds has announced an eighth release candidate for version 6.1 of the Linux kernel.
The emperor penguin last week worried that work on this cut of the kernel had not slowed down, so suggested it might need to stretch beyond his preferred seven release candidates.
In his weekly state of the kernel post, Torvalds released rc8 and thanked developers for settling down.
“So we’ve finally started calming down, and rc8 is noticeably smaller than previous release candidates,” he wrote. “So everything looks good, and while the calming down may have happened later than I wished for, it did happen. Let’s hope this upcoming week is as quiet (or quieter).”
Torvalds also thanked kernel devs for heeding his words about the merge window for Linux 6.2.
The two weeks after the release of a new kernel are reserved for merging stable additions to the kernel with the mainline branch. Torvalds sometimes complains that those contributions often arrive unhelpfully late.
As Linux 6.1 looks set to emerge on December 12, and the two-week merge window would therefore end on December 26, it’s clear the holiday season could make for a rather messy run-up to Linux 6.2.
Torvalds therefore last week urged developers to get their code ready before holiday-related activities have their annual impact on productivity.
Developers appear to have heeded the call, as Torvalds noted on Sunday that code for version 6.2 has started arriving.
“I’m also happy to see that I already have a few pull requests scheduled for when the 6.2 merge window opens up, so some people are being proactive and want to have everything already lined up for a calm holiday season,” he wrote, before adding: “Hint, hint.”
Is that hint really needed? Torvalds’s track record suggests he appreciates the gift of stable and clean code at any time of year. ®
