Linux Networking Still Seeing "Significantly Bigger" Pull Requests Due To AI
Last week's collection of networking subsystem fixes for Linux 7.1 noted craziness continuing with no end in sight with a large pull request of fixes with many of them spurred on by AI/LLM coding agents. This week it's "significantly bigger" than prior kernel cycles for this late stage of kernel development due to this assistance of large language models.
The likes of Claude Code and ChatGPT Codex are still leading to increased patch activity with various fixes coming in heavy. Even with Linus Torvalds on Sunday in Linux 7.1-rc5 noting his disappointment in the many patches causing unnecessary churn, it's continuing ahead of Linux 7.1-rc6 due out this weekend.
Paolo Abeni wrote in yesterday's networking pull request:
And so it continues.
The likes of Claude Code and ChatGPT Codex are still leading to increased patch activity with various fixes coming in heavy. Even with Linus Torvalds on Sunday in Linux 7.1-rc5 noting his disappointment in the many patches causing unnecessary churn, it's continuing ahead of Linux 7.1-rc6 due out this weekend.
Paolo Abeni wrote in yesterday's networking pull request:
"This is again significantly bigger than the same point into the previous cycle, but at least smaller than last week.
I'm not aware of any pending regression for the current cycle.
Including fixes from netfilter.
Current release - regressions:
- netfilter: walk fib6_siblings under RCU
Previous releases - regressions:
- netlink: fix sending unassigned nsid after assigned one
- bridge: fix sleep in atomic context in netlink path
- sched: fix ethx:ingress -> ethy:egress -> ethx:ingress mirred loop
- ipv4: fix net->ipv4.sysctl_local_reserved_ports UaF
- eth: tun: free page on short-frame rejection in tun_xdp_one()
Previous releases - always broken:
- skbuff: fix missing zerocopy reference in pskb_carve helpers
- handshake: drain pending requests at net namespace exit
- ethtool:
- rss: avoid modifying the RSS context response
- module: avoid leaking a netdev ref on module flash errors
- coalesce: cap profile updates at NET_DIM_PARAMS_NUM_PROFILES
- netfilter: fix dst corruption in same register operation
- nfc: hci: fix out-of-bounds read in HCP header parsing
- ipv6: exthdrs: refresh nh pointer after ipv6_hop_jumbo()
- eth:
- vti: use ip6_tnl.net in vti6_changelink().
- vxlan: do not reuse cached ip_hdr() value after skb_tunnel_check_pmtu()"
And so it continues.