One corner of the Linux kernel may finally be getting ahead of the bugs that AI tools keep turning up. Releasing Linux 7.4-rc2 on Sunday evening, Linus Torvalds wrote that BPF lead developer Alexei Starovoitov “claims that on the bpf side at least the fixes are now coming in faster than the new reports, and that sounds lovely if true.”

Torvalds stopped well short of calling the problem solved. Most other parts of the kernel haven’t reached that point, he wrote, but “it’s at least a sign that we _may_ be starting to see the tide starting to turn.” He followed that with “Don’t hold your breath.”

He described rc2 as a big release candidate to go with the largest -rc1 ever. A lot of its bulk is automated Coccinelle cleanup, mostly one- and two-line changes that he received during the merge window and held back because he was on the road.…