On 24.07.26 08:17, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
On Thu, Jul 23, 2026 at 02:21:28PM +0200, Frank Scheiner wrote:
[...] Of course we are hobbyists, we're doing it for the fun of it. If you want to learn more, please head over to:
Cool, but what happens when these last kernels with support for the platform goes end-of-life? While running things in emulators is fun, how will future userspace code that needs newer kernel features ever be possible?
Actually it is already possible:
Our autobuilder built and builds all current stable kernel versions. The post 6.6 ones with patches on top (see e.g. [1]), like for mainline. The stable kernels are also run-tested with Ski, which only requires a few extra patches post linux-4.19.y depending on version ([2]). Also we follow glibc and make it "work" for us ([3]).
[1]: https://github.com/linux-ia64/linux-stable-rc/tree/__mirror/patches
[2]: https://github.com/linux-ia64/ski/tree/hp-sim-for-linux
[3]: https://github.com/linux-ia64/glibc-ia64/
I hope I can get qemu-system-ia64 working in GHA in the future, so we can also run-test non-Ski kernels there.
Mainline is also tested weekly (most of the time) on real hardware ([4]). So stable kernels post 6.6 always start in a working state. I believe I even tested the older ones at least once on real hardware, too.
[4]: https://epic-linux.org/#%21machines/
Cheers, Frank