Re: [PATCH] scripts/setlocalversion: make git describe output more reliable

[Bhaskar Chowdhury <unixbhaskar@gmail.com>]

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On 23:34 Thu 10 Sep 2020, Masahiro Yamada wrote:
>On Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 8:57 PM Rasmus Villemoes
><linux@rasmusvillemoes.dk> wrote:
>>
>> When building for an embedded target using Yocto, we're sometimes
>> observing that the version string that gets built into vmlinux (and
>> thus what uname -a reports) differs from the path under /lib/modules/
>> where modules get installed in the rootfs, but only in the length of
>> the -gabc123def suffix. Hence modprobe always fails.
>>
>> The problem is that Yocto has the concept of "sstate" (shared state),
>> which allows different developers/buildbots/etc. to share build
>> artifacts, based on a hash of all the metadata that went into building
>> that artifact - and that metadata includes all dependencies (e.g. the
>> compiler used etc.). That normally works quite well; usually a clean
>> build (without using any sstate cache) done by one developer ends up
>> being binary identical to a build done on another host. However, one
>> thing that can cause two developers to end up with different builds
>> [and thus make one's vmlinux package incompatible with the other's
>> kernel-dev package], which is not captured by the metadata hashing, is
>> this `git describe`: The output of that can be affected by
>>
>> (1) git version: before 2.11 git defaulted to a minimum of 7, since
>> 2.11 (git.git commit e6c587) the default is dynamic based on the
>> number of objects in the repo
>> (2) hence even if both run the same git version, the output can differ
>> based on how many remotes are being tracked (or just lots of local
>> development branches or plain old garbage)
>> (3) and of course somebody could have a core.abbrev config setting in
>> ~/.gitconfig
>>
>> So in order to avoid `uname -a` output relying on such random details
>> of the build environment which are rather hard to ensure are
>> consistent between developers and buildbots, use an explicit
>> --abbrev=15 option (and for consistency, also use rev-parse --short=15
>> for the unlikely case of no signed tags being usable).
>>
>> Now, why is 60 bits enough for everyone? It's not mathematically
>> guaranteed that git won't have to use 16 in some git repo, but it is
>> beyond unlikely: Even in a repo with 100M objects, the probability
>> that any given commit (i.e. the one being described) clashes with some
>> other object in the first 15 hex chars is less than 1e-10, and
>> currently a git repo tracking Linus', -stable and -rt only has around
>> 10M objects.
>
>
>I agree that any randomness should be avoided.
>
>My question is, do we need 15-digits?
>
>
>The kernelrelease is formed by
>[kernel version] + [some digits of git hash].
>
>
>For example, "git describe" shows as follows:
>
>v5.9.0-rc4-00034-g7fe10096c150
>
>
>Linus gives a new tag every week (or every two week).
>
>
>So, I think the conflict happens
>only when we have two commits that start with the same 7-digits
>in the _same_ release. Is this correct?
>
>We have 14000 - 15000 commits in each release,
>not 100M.
>
>
  I kinda agree with this...we need to chopped down the excess bits from the
  information .  

  Indeed , a 15 digits is too long  to keep up.

  ~Bhaskar
>
>
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Rasmus Villemoes <linux@rasmusvillemoes.dk>
>> ---
>> I could probably fix things by adding a 'git config --local
>> core.abbrev 15' step to the Yocto build process after the repo to
>> build from has been cloned but before building has started. But in the
>> interest of binary reproducibility outside of just Yocto builds, I
>> think it's better if this lives in the kernel.
>>
>>  scripts/setlocalversion | 4 ++--
>>  1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/scripts/setlocalversion b/scripts/setlocalversion
>> index 20f2efd57b11..c5262f0d953d 100755
>> --- a/scripts/setlocalversion
>> +++ b/scripts/setlocalversion
>> @@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ scm_version()
>>
>>         # Check for git and a git repo.
>>         if test -z "$(git rev-parse --show-cdup 2>/dev/null)" &&
>> -          head=$(git rev-parse --verify --short HEAD 2>/dev/null); then
>> +          head=$(git rev-parse --verify --short=15 HEAD 2>/dev/null); then
>>
>>                 # If we are at a tagged commit (like "v2.6.30-rc6"), we ignore
>>                 # it, because this version is defined in the top level Makefile.
>> @@ -59,7 +59,7 @@ scm_version()
>>                         fi
>>                         # If we are past a tagged commit (like
>>                         # "v2.6.30-rc5-302-g72357d5"), we pretty print it.
>> -                       if atag="$(git describe 2>/dev/null)"; then
>> +                       if atag="$(git describe --abbrev=15 2>/dev/null)"; then
>>                                 echo "$atag" | awk -F- '{printf("-%05d-%s", $(NF-1),$(NF))}'
>>
>>                         # If we don't have a tag at all we print -g{commitish}.
>> --
>> 2.23.0
>>
>
>
>-- 
>Best Regards
>Masahiro Yamada

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