Re: [PATCH] Kernel .patches support

Christian Hesse
2005-06-24T21:15:18Z

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On Friday 24 June 2005 09:36, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> 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 can search Debian lists, archives, ... for "tty-locking-fixes7". After
that you probably know what the fix is good for.

On the other hand if there is a security fix in a Debian list you can check if
your kernel is patched by running "zcat /proc/patches.gz | grep
security-fix-foo-bar".

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

If a distribution has a naming convention for itself this patch can already be
useful I think. Even without it can be.

--
Christian

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