I had read rumors during the week, but I refused to believe it. Linus Torvalds always works calmly, it seems that not even a fire around his house would disturb him, but this week something has happened that has made him alter his plans. And no, it has nothing to do with the winter storm that caused many to lose power as they explained to us. last Sunday, But Linux 5.12-rc2 se launched on Friday, and not on Sunday as usual, two days ahead of schedule.
Specifically, Torvalds mentions that he had to speed up rc2 a bit because the rc1 had a nasty swap file problem (swapfile). If it weren't for that problem, everything else would seem totally normal, so much so that the email is even shorter than usual. It does also highlight a reorganization of the management of the io_uring thread, but in all the releases something stands out, so the latter would be unimportant information if it had arrived without the company of the subject in swapfile.
A problem in swapfile accelerates the arrival of Linux 5.12-rc2
Ok this is a couple of days before but rc1 had the nasty swap file issue so I'm speeding up rc2 a bit. Outside of the swap file I / O compensation fix, the only other thing that stands out is a reorganization of the io_uring thread handling, which not only solved some fundamental problems, but actually made the code smaller and simpler as well.
If there are no surprises, Linux 5.12 will arrive in stable form on next April 18. And if there are, then nothing will happen; Torvalds reserves an eighth RC for these cases, and if he finds any stones along the way, he will arrive a week later. For Ubuntu users, Linux 5.12 will not be a version that we can use if we do not install on our own, since Hirsute Hippo will use Linux 5.11.