Re: Requiring Linux 3.2 for glibc 2.24

[Adhemerval Zanella <adhemerval dot zanella at linaro dot org>]

On 01-02-2016 11:35, Dmitry V. Levin wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 31, 2016 at 04:22:07PM +0000, Joseph Myers wrote:
>> As Linux 2.6.32 has been announced to reach end-of-line next month 
>> <https://lkml.org/lkml/2016/1/29/647>, I propose that for glibc 2.24 we 
>> require Linux 3.2 as the minimum kernel version when glibc is used on 
>> systems with the Linux kernel and there isn't already a more recent 
>> architecture-specific minimum.
> 
> There are other providers of LTS linux kernels available, for example,
> RHEL6 kernel has EOL in 2019.  The change you propose would be especially
> nasty to projects like openvz.org: they provide RHEL based kernels to run
> containers, and their RHEL7 based openvz kernel is still in testing.
> Raising the bar in glibc would leave openvz users without a stable kernel
> where they would be able to run containers based on glibc > 2.23.
> 
> That is, I propose to leave unchanged the minimum kernel version required
> for glibc 2.24.
> 
> 

I do not consider RHEL (or any specific provider )to be a LTS provider for 
various reasons:

1. Kernel source is provided by login-wall [1], which IMHO maybe a sufficient
   reason to ditch this a LTS provider;

2. RHEL LTS kernel is also focused only on the architectures that redhat
   effectively support (which are less than what glibc current supports);

3. THEL LTS kernel also backport a lot of features that are not in current
   2.6 LTS (although I am not quite sure if kABI is different, although it
   might since RHEL also patch its glibc);

4. I do not see a good approach to tie kernel support to an specific 
   organization where the current support already exists.

And again I also do not see this very specific openvz.org issue as a 
compelling reason to avoid such minimum kernel change.

[1] https://access.redhat.com/solutions/47210