Icebreaker: Introducing Upstream Kernels to Google’s Data-centers
summary
Google runs a production kernel fork with about 9000 patches and rebases it roughly every two years, which creates huge rebase and testing costs. Icebreaker creates small feature branches on each upstream release, merges them into an icebreaker next branch, and validates them in production so engineers can upstream fixes sooner. Current status: running on 5.13, about 30 patches dropped so far; risks are merge-conflict load, test coverage needs, and getting teams to actually send changes upstream.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (6)
- 0:00Start
- 0:38Overview
- 13:01Icebreaker's Goals
- 16:02Icebreaker Structure
- 21:35Risks with the Icebreaker model
- 28:14Looking forward
