On Tue, 09 May 2023, Jes Sorensen wrote: > On 4/10/23 17:54, NeilBrown wrote: > > On Tue, 11 Apr 2023, Jes Sorensen wrote: > >> Hi, > >> > >> I bumped the minimum kernel version required for mdadm to 2.6.32. > >> > >> Should we drop support for anything prior to 3.10 at this point, since > >> RHEL7 is 3.10 based and SLES12 seems to be 3.12 based. > >> > >> Thoughts? > > > > When you talk about changing the required kernel version, I would find > > it helpful if you at least mention what actual kernel features you now > > want to depend on - at least the more significant ones. > > > > Aside from features, I'd rather think about how old the kernel is. > > 2.6.32 is over 13 years old. > > 3.10 is very nearly 10 years old. > > If there is something significant that landed in 3.10 that we want to > > depend on, then requiring that seems perfectly reasonable. > > > > I think the oldest SLE kernel that you might care about would be 4.12 > > (SLE12-SP5 - nearly 6 years old). Anyone using an older SLE release > > values stability over new functionality and is not going to be trialling > > a new mdadm. > > Hi Neil, > > I guess my mindset is more that I don't expect RHEL/SLES grade distros > to fully upgrade mdadm, but I do see them backporting changes occasionally. > > I was mostly basing my question on what I see us testing for in the > actual code. Dropping support for anything prior to SLES 12 (4.12) and > RHEL 8 (kernel 4.18) seems fair. So where you say "dropping support" you don't actually mean removing any code, but only that you will document somewhere that no effort will be made support, or test against, earlier kernels. Is that correct? Sounds reasonable to me. NeilBrown
