Re: [PATCH] automate patch names in kernel versions

[Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>]

On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 03:15:02PM -0700, Eric Sandall wrote:
> 
> Oliver Xymoron said:
> > Perhaps times have changed enough that I can revive this idea from a
> > few years ago:
> >
> > http://groups.google.com/groups?q=patchname+oxymoron&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=fa.jif8l5v.1b049jd%40ifi.uio.no&rnum=1
> >
> > <quote year=1999>
> > This four-line patch provides a means for listing what patches have
> > been built into a kernel. This will help track non-standard kernel
> > versions, such as those released by Redhat, or Alan's ac series, etc.
> > more easily.
> >
> > With this patch in place, each new patch can include a file of the
> > form "patchname.[identifier]" in the top level source directory and
> > [identifier] will then be added to the kernel version string. For
> > instance, Alan's ac patches could include a file named patchdesc.ac2
> > (containing a change log, perhaps), and the resulting kernel would be
> > identified as 2.2.0-pre6+ac2, both at boot and by uname.
> >
> > This may prove especially useful for tracking problems with kernels
> > built by distribution packagers and problems reported by automated
> > tools.
> > </quote>
> >
> > The patch now appends patches as -name rather than +name to avoid
> > issues that might exist with packaging tools and scripts.
> <snip>
> 
> One problem I see right off the bat with this is that your kernel image
> name (and label) in LILO can only be so long, and if you apply too many
> patches (acpi+xfs+preempt+low etc.) it would become too long.  This may be
> an extreme case, but it can happen (I usually apply apci, preempt, low,
> sched, etc., though the ck patch does most of this for me now).

There's already code in the makefile that warns when it grows over 64
characters.

-- 
Matt Mackall : http://www.selenic.com : of or relating to the moon