AI Makes Linux 7.4 Merge Window the Largest in Kernel History

"On a Git commit basis, the Linux 7.4 merge window has been the busiest on record," writes Phoronix," with 19,671 commits since Linux 7.3: As of this morning in Linux Git ahead of v7.4-rc1, the kernel source tree is up to 41,605,120 lines. That's from 5,193,578 blank lines, 4,993,604 lines of comments, and 31,417,938 lines of detected code. Or nearly half a million lines of code added during the Linux 7.4 merge window, ignoring comments and blank lines [as detected by cloc ]. A historical graph of commits shows a clear spike for Linux 7.4, which Phoronix argues shows the definite recent uptick due to AI/LLM activity."With Linux kernel maintainers being "completely overwhelmed" due to both AI generated bug reports and patches/fixes, the Git commit activity has been surging as a result... The upward trend has continued building the past several kernel releases. Typically the merge windows saw 13~14k commits or less and now we are pushing 20k.... Linux 6.14: 10,034Linux 6.15: 13,568 Linux 6.16: 13,805 Linux 6.17: 12,289 Linux 6.18: 12,910 Linux 6.19: 13,229 Linux 7.0: 12,468 Linux 7.1: 13,963 Linux 7.2: 14,395 Linux 7.3: 16,267 Linux 7.4: 19,671 And "we could still see a few more trickle in today for Linux 7.4 ahead of the expected Linux 7.4-rc1 kernel release later in the day." UPDATE:"People are expecting 7.4 to be the next long-term support release," Linus Torvalds wrote today in his weekly state of the kernel update, saying that's also "another independent reason why some releases tend larger than others. So it may not *just* be the flood of AI patches." The Register reports:Torvalds also seems not to be completely convinced that all AI submissions are entirely helpful, by describing this release as "Large, and full of fixes for issues found by AI (and more and more the patches have been suggested by AI too, although they often get rewritten)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.