We are pleased to announce that the Real-time Microconference has been accepted into the 2021 Linux Plumbers Conference. Since 2004, the project that has become known as PREEMPT_RT, formally the real-time patch, has improved the real-time and low-latency features of the Linux kernel. Over the past decade, many parts of PREEMPT_RT have been included into the official Linux codebase. Examples include: mutexes, high-resolution timers, lockdep, ftrace, RT scheduling, SCHED_DEADLINE, RCU_PREEMPT, generic interrupts, priority inheritance futexes, threaded interrupt handlers, and more. The number of patches that need integration has been significantly reduced, and the rest is mature enough to make their way into mainline Linux.
The following accomplishments have been made as a result of last year’s microconference:
- The osnoise and timerlat tracers (merged on 5.14)
- Progress on tools to facilitate maintenance of the stable RT releases.
- Progress on the full mainline merge, but some challenges were raised and more is to be done.
This year’s topics to be discussed include:
- New tools for PREEMPT_RT analysis.
- How do we teach the rest of the kernel developers how not to break PREEMPT_RT?
- Stable maintainers tools discussion & improvements.
- The usage of PREEMPT_RT on safety-critical systems: what do we need to do?
- Make NAPI and the kernel-rt working better together.
- Migrate disable and the problems that they cause on rt tasks.
- It is time to discuss the “BKL”-like style of our preempt/bh/irq_disable() synchronization functions.
- How do we close the documentation gap
- The status of the merge, and how can we resolve the last issues that block the merge.
- Invite the developers of the areas where patches are still under discussion to help to find an agreement.
- How can we improve the testing of the -rt, to follow the problems raised as Linus tree advances?
- What’s next?
Come and join us in the discussion of controlling what tasks get to runon your machine and when.
We hope to see you there.
