Determining patch impact on a specific config

[greg@kroah.com (Greg KH)]

On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 03:25:44PM +0200, Greg KH wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 12:39:39PM +0000, Nicholas Mc Guire wrote:
> > 
> > Hi !
> > 
> >  For a given patch I would like to find out if it impacts a
> >  given configuration or not. Now of course one could compile the
> >  kernel for the configuration prior to the patch, then apply the
> >  patch and recompile to find out if there is an impact but I would
> >  be looking for some smarter solution. Checking files only 
> >  unfortunately will not do it, due to ifdefs and friends so make
> >  would detect a change and recompile even if the affeted code 
> >  area is actualy dropped by the preprocessor.
> > 
> >  What Im trying to do is find out is, how many of the e.g. stable
> >  fixes of 4.4-4.4.14 would have impacted a given configuration - the
> >  whole exercise is intended for some statistical analysis of bugs
> >  in linux-stable.

Also, are you going to be analyizing the bugs in the stable trees, or
the ones we just happen to fix?

Note, that's not always the same thing :)

thanks,

greg k-h