The Linux 7.4 Merge Window Is Easily The Largest In Kernel History

After writing this morning with some stats about the size of the Linux 7.4 merge window and the kernel's source tree approaching 42 million lines, I was curious to run some numbers for putting the size of the merge window into perspective against the major kernel releases of the past 15 years. This shows the definite recent uptick due to AI/LLM activity. The Linux kernel development pace has been on a definite upward trajectory over the past year. While, yes, Linux popularity is likely at an all-time high from consumer devices to massive growth in data centers, etc, a lot of the uptick in kernel patches is due to AI/LLMs. 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. For visualizing the impact, here is a look at the number of Git commits per Linux kernel merge window each release going back to Linux 3.1 -- released in 2011: The Linux 7.4 merge window by far is the largest merge window ever in terms of commits/patches. Nearly 20k! 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. Here's all the raw numbers for each merge window for those curious: Linux 3.1: 7620 Linux 3.2: 10730 Linux 3.3: 9460 Linux 3.4: 9859 Linux 3.5: 10069 Linux 3.6: 9161 Linux 3.7: 11084 Linux 3.8: 11738 Linux 3.9: 10942 Linux 3.10: 12715 Linux 3.11: 10161 Linux 3.12: 10153 Linux 3.13: 11356 Linux 3.14: 11367 Linux 3.15: 12826 Linux 3.16: 12078 Linux 3.17: 11529 Linux 3.18: 10363 Linux 3.19: 12142 Linux 4.0: 9591 Linux 4.1: 11410 Linux 4.2: 12809 Linux 4.3: 11431 Linux 4.4: 12226 Linux 4.5: 11032 Linux 4.6: 12929 Linux 4.7: 11518 Linux 4.8: 12423 Linux 4.9: 15095 Linux 4.10: 12302 Linux 4.11: 11747 Linux 4.12: 13729 Linux 4.13: 12051 Linux 4.14: 12352 Linux 4.15: 13489 Linux 4.16: 12654 Linux 4.17: 12633 Linux 4.18: 12373 Linux 4.19: 13108 Linux 4.20: 12883 Linux 5.0: 11551 Linux 5.1: 12032 Linux 5.2: 12792 Linux 5.3: 13390 Linux 5.4: 13286 Linux 5.5: 13452 Linux 5.6: 11454 Linux 5.7: 12748 Linux 5.8: 15086 Linux 5.9: 13681 Linux 5.10: 14770 Linux 5.11: 13261 Linux 5.12: 11749 Linux 5.13: 15069 Linux 5.14: 13764 Linux 5.15: 11224 Linux 5.16: 13137 Linux 5.17: 11812 Linux 5.18: 14115 Linux 5.19: 13973 Linux 6.0: 14378 Linux 6.1: 12288 Linux 6.2: 14595 Linux 6.3: 13565 Linux 6.4: 13871 Linux 6.5: 12492 Linux 6.6: 13161 Linux 6.7: 16203 Linux 6.8: 13052 Linux 6.9: 13242 Linux 6.10: 12402 Linux 6.11: 12954 Linux 6.12: 12115 Linux 6.13: 12142 Linux 6.14: 10034 Linux 6.15: 13568 Linux 6.16: 13805 Linux 6.17: 12289 Linux 6.18: 12910 Linux 6.19: 13229 Linux 7.0: 12468 Linux 7.1: 13963 Linux 7.2: 14395 Linux 7.3: 16267 Linux 7.4: 19671 Granted, 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. With much of the AI/LLM activity being around fixes, the surge in patches don't stop at the merge window. Here is a look at the number of Git commits for each kernel cycle in full from prior release to the tagged stable version: Linux 7.3 was the first time breaching 20k commits for an entire kernel cycle (20,260 commits from v7.2 to v7.3). Now with Linux 7.4 we're seeing nearly that much just during the merge window.