[elrepo] kernel/kernel-lts separation

[Phil Perry]

On 10/10/12 19:29, Alan Bartlett wrote:
> Yawn! Who woke me up by mentioning my name? Hmm . . .
>
> I'm going to advertise my ignorance -- for what does the 'LTS'
> abbreviation stand, please?
>

LTS = Long Term Service (although this is more of an Ubuntuism than a 
tern used by kernel.org who prefer simply "longterm" kernel). As of Jan 
2012, 3.0.y is the new "longterm" kernel release.

The folks at kernel.org have made a "long term" commitment to support 
this version. Greg K-H will maintain it for a minimum of two years. See 
here:

http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/stable-status-01-2012.html

So for us this makes a good choice for an older kernel base in addition 
to the mainline kernel as once you've packaged it the packaging 
shouldn't break with subsequent updates, and for users, if it works now 
it should continue to work for the next two years.

> I've just been over to kernel.org and this is what I've seen --
>
> [quote]
> Latest Stable Kernel:    3.6.1
>
> stable: 	3.6.1
> mainline: 	3.6
> stable: 	3.5.6
> stable: 	3.4.13
> stable: 	3.3.8 (EOL)
> stable: 	3.2.31
> stable: 	3.0.45
> stable: 	2.6.34.13
> stable: 	2.6.32.60
> linux-next: 	next-20121010
> [/quote]
>
> What I am currently supporting for EL6 --
>
> In brief, the 3.0 series and the (latest) 3.6 series. Any evidence you
> have for the 3.5 series is purely an artefact that currently exists
> for the newly established archival process. Once those packages have
> been archived appropriately, one of my colleagues will withdraw them
> from the repository
>

So if we named these packages as:

kernel-ml for the current mainline kernel

and

kernel-lt or kernel-lts for the current longterm kernel (3.0.y)

then users could pick one or the other (or even both) and have yum 
update them without newer versions overriding updates to older releases. 
For example, if I find kernel-ml-3.0.y works for me but the latest 
kernel-ml breaks things, I can stick with the 3.0.y series and yum will 
still automatically pull in updates for me. That doesn't happen at present.

> What I currently have available for EL5 --
>
> The last version which would support a fully functioning Gnome GUI,
> 2.6.35.14 and the last series before 3.0 appeared, that is 2.6.39.4
> The sources for those package sets are no longer supported upstream
> and so they remain for historical purposes.
>
> What I am currently supporting for EL5 --
>
> Just the 3.0 series. (I asked a question [1] with regards to a
> possible newer package set and have noted the response.)
>

And if we were to adopt the above renaming, although not currently 
necessary in the el5 repo, it would make sense to likewise rename the 
3.0.y series to kernel-lt or kernel-lts to be in keeping with el6.

Phil