Re: Linux 2.6.29

Hans-Peter Jansen
2009-03-30T22:00:51Z

Am Freitag, 27. März 2009 schrieb Linus Torvalds:

> In other words, the main Makefile version is totally useless in
> non-linear development, and is meaningful _only_ at specific release
> times. In between releases, it's essentially a random thing, since
> non-linear development means that versioning simply fundamentally isn't
> some simple monotonic numbering. And this is exactly when
> CONFIG_LOCALVERSION_AUTO is a huge deal.

Well, you guys always see things from a deeply involved kernel developer
_using git_ POV - which I do understand and accept (unlike hats nobody can
change his head after all ;-), but there are other approaches to kernel
source code, e.g. git is also really great for tracking the kernel
development without any further involvement apart from using the resulting
trees.

I build kernel rpms from your git tree, and have a bunch of BUILDs lying
around. Sure, I can always fetch the tarballs or fiddle with git, but why?
Having a Makefile start commit allows to make sure with simplest tools,
say "head Makefile" that a locally copied 2.6.29 tree is really a 2.6.29,
and not something moving towards the next release. That's all, nothing
less, nothing more, it's just a strong hint which blend is in the box.

I always wonder, why Arjan does not intervene for his kerneloops.org
project, since your approach opens a window of uncertainty during the merge
window when simply using git as an efficient fetch tool.

Ducks and hides now,
Pete