[OpenWrt-Devel] OpenWrt 19.01 plans

[Eric Luehrsen]

On 09/27/2018 04:22 PM, Hauke Mehrtens wrote:
> On 09/26/2018 09:38 AM, Koen Vandeputte wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 2018-09-23 00:42, Hauke Mehrtens wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> We talked about plans for the next OpenWrt releases in this mail thread:
>>> http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/openwrt-adm/2018-July/000849.html
>>> This mail is more or less a summary of the conclusions, this is still
>>> open for change especially the dates as this depends on people having
>>> time to do the work.
>>>
>>> The next release, lets call it OpenWrt 19.01, should happen in January
>>> 2019, we would branch off from master in December 2018. This is the
>>> current plan, but based on past experience it could also happen later.
>>>
>>> OpenWrt 19.01 will ship with kernel 4.14 only, we encourage everyone to
>>> update the targets to kernel 4.14, support for kernel 4.19 will probably
>>> be added to OpenWrt master soon, but we will not select it as the
>>> default kernel for any target till OpenWrt 19.01 is branched off, to get
>>> more testing on 4.14. The release after 19.01, which should happen in
>>> late summer 2019, should then use kernel 4.19 only.
>>>
>>> For OpenWrt 19.01 GCC will stay on the 7.X branch, binutils and musl
>>> already got some upgrades after the 18.06 release and could get some
>>> more updates.
>>>
>>> We are currently working on updating the wireless drivers and getting
>>> them closer to upstream. The wireless driver in OpenWrt 19.01 will be
>>> taken from kernel 4.19 or later and we want to update them more
>>> frequently in master.
>>>
>>> Otherwise we will have the normal changes in all places like with every
>>> release.
>>>
>>> LEDE 17.01 will get security updates and occasional bug fixes till
>>> OpenWrt 19.01 was released, but we encourage everyone to upgrade to
>>> 18.06 to get full security support already now, as especially some of
>>> the packages are not well maintained any more.
>>>
>>> Hauke
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> openwrt-devel mailing list
>>> openwrt-devel at lists.openwrt.org
>>> https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel
>> Hi Hauke,
>> Hi All,
>>
>> Some targets are still on (EOL) kernel 3.18 today.
>> This kernel also still exists by the grace of Greg K-H but could be
>> dropped any moment.
>>
>> I've bumped it a few times (untested) just for the sake of security
>> updates.
>> But afaict, nobody attempted/requested to update these to a newer kernel
>> version.
>>
>> These targets were also dropped in 18.06 branch.
>> Maybe we should also consider dropping support for these targets in master?
>>
>>
>> adm5120
>> xburst
>> mcs814x
>> au1000
>> ppc40x
>> adm8668
>> ppc44x
> 
> I vote for removing them if on one wants to take care of these targets.
> If something breaks kernel < 4.9 I anyway do not care any more.
> 
> Hauke

Considering that OpenWrt is volunteer spare time and hobby support, it 
is probably prudent to aggressively drop old and less popular targets. 
Considering 802.11ax is around the corner and (ac) is well established, 
it won't be hard to find for example ath79 compatible devices in (ac) or 
(n) as either new-overstock or used. They may not be able to push lots 
of bandwidth, but if you have <~100Mbps internet they don't need to. If 
you have >~200Mbps internet for example with DOCSIS3.1 provider, then 
you probably need a newer dual-core device to take advantage of it. 
Bottom line is it probably won't hurt to drop many targets, because 
small budget users will still have plenty to chose from.

Eric

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