what is the purpose of "LOCALVERSION" variable in scripts/setlocalversion?

what is the purpose of "LOCALVERSION" variable in scripts/setlocalversion?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  i was perusing "scripts/setlocalversion" to see the variations for
setting the kernel version, and i ran across this snippet:

  # CONFIG_LOCALVERSION and LOCALVERSION (if set)
  res="${res}${CONFIG_LOCALVERSION}${LOCALVERSION}"

i'm well aware of the kernel *config* option CONFIG_LOCALVERSION, but
i was unaware of the apparently independent variable "LOCALVERSION"
which is used in that assignment.

  there's precious little mention of that variable ... under what
circumstances does one set it? is it meant to be set in the user's
environment and simply inherited that way? is anyone here using it on
a regular basis?

rday

-- 

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Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
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what is the purpose of "LOCALVERSION" variable in scripts/setlocalversion?

[Chinmay V S]

> i was unaware of the apparently independent variable "LOCALVERSION"
> which is used in that assignment.
>
>   there's precious little mention of that variable ... under what
> circumstances does one set it?

I have sometimes seen a "+" or a short-commit-sha appended when
building kernel in a local git repository with uncommitted/committed
changes.

Also i suppose one could run make LOCALVERSION=<unique-string-here> to
help identify a kernel image by the embedded <unique-string> if
required at a later time.

As the image name is one of the first things to be printed in the
kernel/dmesg logs, it helps map error logs to their respective builds.