inclusion, it should be accepted by a relevant subsystem maintainer -
though this acceptance is not a guarantee that the patch will make it
all the way to the mainline. The patch will show up in the maintainer's
- subsystem tree and into the staging trees (described below). When the
+ subsystem tree and into the -next trees (described below). When the
process works, this step leads to more extensive review of the patch and
the discovery of any problems resulting from the integration of this
patch with work being done by others.
normally the right way to go.
-2.4: STAGING TREES
+2.4: NEXT TREES
The chain of subsystem trees guides the flow of patches into the kernel,
but it also raises an interesting question: what if somebody wants to look
the interesting subsystem trees, but that would be a big and error-prone
job.
-The answer comes in the form of staging trees, where subsystem trees are
+The answer comes in the form of -next trees, where subsystem trees are
collected for testing and review. The older of these trees, maintained by
Andrew Morton, is called "-mm" (for memory management, which is how it got
started). The -mm tree integrates patches from a long list of subsystem
Use of the MMOTM tree is likely to be a frustrating experience, though;
there is a definite chance that it will not even compile.
-The other staging tree, started more recently, is linux-next, maintained by
+The other -next tree, started more recently, is linux-next, maintained by
Stephen Rothwell. The linux-next tree is, by design, a snapshot of what
the mainline is expected to look like after the next merge window closes.
Linux-next trees are announced on the linux-kernel and linux-next mailing