The development of the next version of the Linux kernel is being a roller coaster. At least in terms of its size, because it started out huge, then it got smaller, it grew again, it lost weight again ... but for Linus Torvalds, who He launched yesterday Linux 5.8-rc6, everything seems very normal. And it seems normal to you because this will be a large release, both in size and because it will introduce a lot of changes to your code. Up to 20% will be modified.
The news this week is that there is no news or that everything has been very calm or boring. That is what we understand of an email so short that we can include it in its entirety in an article like this. In addition, Torvalds himself mentions it, although he assures that calm and bored is how he likes things to go, partly because there is no need to worry about any setback.
Linux 5.8-rc6: calm and boring
Things still seem very normal, even if this is a great release. rc6 is pretty normal for the course, and nothing here stands out in terms of size or otherwise. All stats look normal, with a fairly flat diffstat (so not huge in hot spots, no big scary changes). Drivers (all), architecture updates (arm64, x86), with some changes in the filesystem and in the kernel kernel. A shortlog has been added, but I doubt most people will find anything exciting there. Which is all good. Quiet and boring is what I like.
Although at the beginning of its development it came to be considered that a rc8 would be necessary, if everything continues as before it will not be necessary. Therefore, the stable version of Linux 5.8 would arrive on 2 August. If there is a major setback, what you saw would be a surprise, the official launch would be on the 9th of the same month.