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Linux 4.9 has 'issues that just shouldn't be issues'. Or might not

Linus Torvalds both is and isn't worried about progress towards next release

Linux overlord Linus Torvalds is both worried and chilled about the progress of Linux 4.9. Or maybe he isn't: his weekly message about the latest release candidate has a bet each way.

“We're getting further in the rc series, and while things have stayed pretty calm, I'm not sure if we're quite there yet,” he posted to the Linux Kernel Mailing List on Sunday evening. But in the next sentence, he calms down, saying “This may be one of those releases that have an rc8, which considering the size of 4.9 is perhaps not that unusual.”

In the next paragraph of his post he again expresses both worry and calm.

“That said, nothing particular is bothering me all that much, but we've had some of the VMALLOC_STACK fixups continue to trickle in, so I worry that we're not quite done there yet.”

He does it again in the next paragraph, first saying ““The fact that rc6 is bigger than rc5 was is not a particularly great sign” before then saying the situation is probably “just the usual timing fluctuation: rc6 had networking updates, rc5 didn't, for example.”

“There are also some rdma updates etc that stand out. Nothing that looks particularly worrisome.”

Perhaps the only way to figure out whether Linus is right to worry, or right to chill, is to follow is regular final exhortation: “Go forth and test.” ®

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