Linus Torvalds on Sunday announced the availability of the stable Linux kernel 6.1, the first to carry the original Rust infrastructure, and said he’s “much happier” about its state than in a few weeks. before.
In October, in a Linux 6.1 release candidate, Torvalds complain about kernel developers sending code at the last minutecompare their submissions with students who “worked all night to get their paper one day before the deadline”.
While he’s more than happy about the state of Linux 6.1, which arrived a week later than planned, Torvalds is worried about Linux 6.2’s “merge window from hell,” just before the holidays. .
Also: What are AppImages and how do you use them on Linux?
He reports that he is pleased to see that the developers have “taken note” of his complaint, with some submitting a 6.2 pull request, which should help combat the pre-holiday merge window. “dilemma”.
“While it is right to delay everything for a week, it makes timing for the 6.2 merge window awkward,” Torvalds writes.
“That said, I’m happy to report that people seem to have kept that in mind, and I’ve got two dozen pending pull requests for tomorrow in my inbox. And hopefully I will. get another batch overnight so I can try to really finish as many windows merge as soon as possible. We all want a peaceful holiday season.”
One of the early pull requests for 6.2 is driver for Google ChromeOS Human Presence Sensor (HPS), a hardware sensor that can detect the presence of one or more people in front of a Chromebook. Via Phoronix, Google has shipped the cros_hps_i2c kernel driver for ChromeOS HPS, which supports sensors connected to the I2C bus. It’s unknown what sensor Google is planning; the patch does not mention the fingerprint sensor, but it could also include the use of the camera.
“When loaded, the driver outputs the sensor to user space via a character device. This device only supports power management, meaning communication with the sensor must be done via transmission. Regular I2C from userspace,” Google explained in the patch.
“Power management is implemented by enabling the corresponding source GPIO while at least one userspace process keeps fd open on the character device. By default, the device is powered down if there is no client application available. is active.”
Google device firmware, I2C protocol and other documentation available here. In March 2021, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Chromebooks, Google announced its aim is to use more sensors to personalize the Chromebook experience. As 9to5Google reported last September, Google has made some progress with HPS, which could help bridge the gap between Windows devices and Chromebooks — such as devices that lack biometric sign-in features like Windows Hello. ChromeOS devices can also automatically lock if the user is not present for a certain period of time.
Also: Tech jobs are changing. Here are the real skills you’ll need to get promoted
Torvalds remains wary of late pull requests – and to make sure everyone has a “peaceful holiday break”, he reiterated that he will continue to be “quite strict about the reasonable deadline rules”. best.”
“The rule is that pull requests sent to me in the merge window should be ready _before_ the merge window, and have been around for a while in linux-next. There are no new experimental last-minute developments that have been made before the merge window. unseen by our test automation.”
Linux-next is the area for the latest kernel jobs and patches for the next kernel merge window.
In the name of a stress-free pre-holiday season, Torvalds says he’ll drop any pull requests that are late or appear to be in Linux-next yet.
“So if you’ve come to realize that the work isn’t in linux-next, then agree not to even send me a pull request, and we’ll all be content with a quiet year-end season. OK?,” he wrote.
Rust support in Linux 6.1 is a major milestone for the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), which is based on the Linux kernel and currently 21% of new code is written in Rust. With Linux 6.1, Google’s AOSP team is bringing memory safety to the kernel, starting with the kernel driver.
