[OpenWrt-Devel] Kernel version for OpenWrt 20.X

[Hauke Mehrtens]

Hi,

We had a discussion about adding kernel 5.4 support to OpenWrt master
here:
https://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2019-October/019610.html
and Koen is working on it, as far as I know.

The final OpenWrt 19.07 release is getting closer and we initially
planned to do the next release in January 2020 which is soon. This 20.x
release is planned to use kernel 4.19 only.

Currently the following targets are on kernel 4.19:
 * apm821xx
 * armvirt
 * ath79
 * brcm2708
 * cns3xxx
 * gemini
 * imx6
 * ipq40xx
 * lantiq
 * malta
 * mpc85xx
 * mvebu
 * mxs
 * octeon
 * omap
 * sunxi
 * tegra
 * x86
 * zynq

The following targets are still on kernel 4.14:
 * ar71xx
	Should be replaced by ath79
 * arc770
 * archs38
	A patch was send to the mailing list some time ago
 * at91
 * ath25
 * bcm53xx
	4.19 patches in master
 * brcm47xx
	4.19 patches in master
 * brcm63xx
	4.19 patches in master
 * ipq806x
	https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/2472
 * kirkwood
	4.19 patches in master
 * layerscape
 * mediatek
	4.19 patches in master
	mt7629 subtarget uses kernel 4.19
 * octeontx
 * oxnas
 * pistachio
 * ramips
	https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/2385
 * rb532
 * samsung
 * uml

The following are still on kernel 4.9:
 * ar7
 * ixp4xx
 * orion

I assume kernel 4.19 and 5.4 will get support for about 6 years because
they are used in Android, so I do not see this as a problem for any
version. Currently kernel.org lists much shorter support times.

Based on these numbers it could be already hard to get everything to
4.19 till beginning of January, at least we should start switching the
default to kernel 4.19 for every target very soon to get the needed testing.

I would suggest to leave kernel 4.19 out and directly go to kernel 5.4.
Then we would target April for the release and hopefully get it in
Summer. ;-) This would still be enough time to make everything stable
with kernel 5.4 and port most of the targets.

As we had kernel 4.19 support in OpenWrt for a longer time and some
development was already happening on that while all targets in master
still used kernel 4.14 before the 19.07 branch.

When you also work on the upstream kernel it is much easier when we are
close to upstream and not more than one year behind upstream.

To be honest, I do not see a OpenWrt 20.01 release in January based on
the current ongoing 19.07 release and the current master state.

Should I start a vote on this topic?

Hauke

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