A Forest of Code: Visualizing the Release Information of the Linux Kernel

Abstract

With an average of over 900 top-level merges into the Linux kernel per release, maintenance of older versions of the kernel becomes nearly impossible. Maintainers must be able to understand how changes to the current vision of the kernel fit into older versions of the kernel. This presents the need for a tool to provide meaningful explanation of what is happening in the kernel. Our goal is to design a web-based system capable of visualizing the commit and release information of the Linux kernel in a meaningful way.