[arch-dev-public] glibc and minimum kernel version

[Pierre Schmitz]

On Sun, 12 Dec 2010 01:49:45 +1000, Allan McRae <allan at archlinux.org>
wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am in the progress of updating the toolchain and thought it time to
> review what our minimum required kernel version is for glibc.
> 
> For those that do not know, assuming a newer kernel allows glibc to
> have less workarounds compiled in.  So it may be advantagous to have a
> more recent version as the minimum required.  This comes at the
> obvious cost of not having support for older kernels so a tradeoff is
> needed... When we discussed this 18 months ago, it was decided 2.6.18
> was appropraite then, but much has changed since.
> 
> I am going to suggest that we follow the oldest longterm support
> kernel.  That would now be the 2.6.27.x series, which has been around
> for over two years.
> 
> That might be being overly bold, so feel free to point out how much
> such an update would break...  and suggest an alternative minimum.
> 
> Allan

Thanks for bringing this up. This also includes the question for how
long we should support updates in general. (I'll open a new thread
instead of hijacking this one)

For the minimum kernel requiring the oldest lts one seems sane to me.
This should ensure a smooth update even if you use our lts kernel and
don't update that often.

3.6.18 was released for years ago, so I don't think a lot of Arch users
would be affected.

Greetings,

Pierre

-- 
Pierre Schmitz, https://users.archlinux.de/~pierre