WireGuard Could Be Mainlined Before Christmas

It's been a wild past few weeks for WireGuard as the secure VPN tunnel destined for the mainline Linux kernel and also supported on all other major platforms. It turns out WireGuard could quite well end up in the Linux 5.5 kernel rather than having to wait until Linux 5.6.

The mainlining excitement grew a few weeks ago after the Linux crypto API adopted some aspects of WireGuard's Zinc crypto code. That unblocked WireGuard for being able to go mainline as the crypto code has been a point of contention for developers in getting this long sought after code merged.

That Zinc'ed crypto code was already merged for Linux 5.5. While it was previously indicated by WireGuard's Jason Donenfeld that they would aim for mainline with Linux 5.6, it looks like it could actually be merged this year with the currently open Linux 5.5 merge window.

Given the crypto pieces came together and are already in Linus Torvalds' tree, Donenfeld brought up whether WireGuard could still land for Linux 5.5. For that to happen, it would likely need some final sign-offs on the code and then also see a secondary networking subsystem pull request. The main networking feature pull for Linux 5.5 was already submitted so it would likely be a separate PR sent into Torvalds just with the WireGuard kernel code. Going back to August 2018, Linus had already said he hoped it would be merged sooner rather than later.

The latest WireGuard Linux kernel code can be found here. We'll see in the days ahead if there is enough traction to get it merged for Linux 5.5 as an early Christmas present.