Re: [PATCH] Kernel .patches support

Adrian Bunk
2005-06-24T07:38:40Z

On Thu, Jun 23, 2005 at 11:58:27PM +0200, Christian Hesse wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> every time I apply a patch to my kernel tree I (or my scripts) make an
>
> echo $PATCHNAME $PATCHVERSION >> .patches
>
> This patch makes the file accessible via /proc/patches.gz. I think this can be
> handy if you want to know what patches you (or your distributor) applied to
> your running kernel...
>...
> Let me know what you think.

To be honest, I'm not a fan of it.

If e.g. looking at a Debian kernel source that has 289 different patches
with names like tty-locking-fixes7 applied, you'll see that this often
won't give you much valuable information.

You'd need an uniform naming convention for patches across
distributions, and I don't think such things are worth the effort.

> Regards,
> Christian

> --- linux-2.6.12+/include/linux/patches.h 1970-01-01 01:00:00.000000000 +0100
> +++ linux-2.6.12+-patches/include/linux/patches.h 2005-06-23 23:10:15.278685000 +0200
> @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
> +#ifndef _LINUX_PATCHES_H
> +#define _LINUX_PATCHES_H
> +
> +#include <linux/autoconf.h>
> +
> +#endif
>...

What do you need this file for?

cu
Adrian

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