Re: [PATCH v2] kbuild: switch from lz4c to lz4 for compression

[Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Fri, Nov 15, 2024 at 09:39:40AM +0100, Francesco Dolcini wrote:
> Hello Greg,
> 
> On Thu, Nov 14, 2024 at 05:02:01PM +0100, Greg KH wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 14, 2024 at 03:56:44PM +0100, Parth Pancholi wrote:
> > > From: Parth Pancholi <parth.pancholi@toradex.com>
> > > 
> > > Replace lz4c with lz4 for kernel image compression.
> > > Although lz4 and lz4c are functionally similar, lz4c has been deprecated
> > > upstream since 2018. Since as early as Ubuntu 16.04 and Fedora 25, lz4
> > > and lz4c have been packaged together, making it safe to update the
> > > requirement from lz4c to lz4.
> > > 
> > > Consequently, some distributions and build systems, such as OpenEmbedded,
> > > have fully transitioned to using lz4. OpenEmbedded core adopted this
> > > change in commit fe167e082cbd ("bitbake.conf: require lz4 instead of
> > > lz4c"), causing compatibility issues when building the mainline kernel
> > > in the latest OpenEmbedded environment, as seen in the errors below.
> > > 
> > > This change also updates the LZ4 compression commands to make it backward
> > > compatible by replacing stdin and stdout with the '-' option, due to some
> > > unclear reason, the stdout keyword does not work for lz4 and '-' works for
> > > both. In addition, this modifies the legacy '-c1' with '-9' which is also
> > > compatible with both. This fixes the mainline kernel build failures with
> > > the latest master OpenEmbedded builds associated with the mentioned
> > > compatibility issues.
> > > 
> > > LZ4     arch/arm/boot/compressed/piggy_data
> > > /bin/sh: 1: lz4c: not found
> > > ...
> > > ...
> > > ERROR: oe_runmake failed
> > > 
> > > Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
> > 
> > What bug does this resolve that it needs to be backported to stable
> > kernels?
> 
> This is not solving any existing actual bug, and therefore there is no
> fixes tag.
> 
> The issue here is that the kernel build system is using lz4c, that is
> deprecated since 2018, and now distributions are actively moving away from it. 
> 
> openSUSE Tumbleweed and OE already removed it, so you would not be able
> to compile a stable kernel on such distribution when using lz4 unless we
> backport such a patch.
> 
> Everything should be properly documented in the commit message already.
> 
> My understanding is that something like that would be a reason for
> backporting to stable, if my understanding is not correct we'll remove
> the cc:stable and send a v3.

Please read:
    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/stable-kernel-rules.html
for what meets stable kernel requirements.  I don't think that this
patch is that.

thanks,

greg k-h