Re: Linux 2.6.32-rc3

Justin P. Mattock
2009-10-07T04:02:57Z

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Oct 2009, Dave Airlie wrote:
>
>> Why don't you just have the kernel version Linux-commitid?
>>
>
> That's actually what I personally do 99% of the time. And, in fact, it's
> how CONFIG_LOCALVERSION_AUTO effectively works. It's very useful for doing
> things like
>
> gitk v$(uname -r)..
>
> which really does work (well, apart from the "-dirty" case when I've
> compiled a dirty kernel that has something that isn't committed). Try it.
> It's a great way to see "what do I have in my current tree that I'm not
> actually running".
>
> So with CONFIG_LOCALVERSION_AUTO, you can largely pretend that you really
> only have the git SHA1. The rest is "fluff" for people.
>
>
>> why keep up the pretense that the 2.6.xx bit means anything outside of release?
>>
>
> Agreed. However, it _does_ mean something for releases.
>
> And that is really how you should think of it. I update the kernel
> Makefile for releases, and nothing else. If you compile a non-release
> kernel, the version is meaningless - unless you have
> CONFIG_LOCALVERSION_AUTO.
>
>
>> You could just have the tarball generation scripts make it into a 2.6.31 but
>> for everyone else we never see it.
>>
>
> Well, about a year ago I actually considered generating the version
> entirely from the tags in the git tree, and do it entirely that way.
>
> The reason I didn't is that even if it only makes sense for releases, it
> is (a) tradition and (b) useful without (or across) SCM's and (c) human-
> readable. In fact, I tend to like seeing things like
>
> Linux version 2.6.32-rc2-00351-g58e57fb
>
> in my dmesg outputs, because it does mean something _outside_ of just the
> pure "git version" (the '58e57fb' part is sufficient as far as git is
> concerned). It does have a very human-readable component to it: it's 351
> commits after 2.6.32-rc2.
>
>
As a total newbie, this took a few to see, but then once I connected the
dots
made complete sense. (i.g. the how many commits 00351 and commit number
g58e57fb)
> So I literally think that our current CONFIG_LOCALVERSION_AUTO includes
> the best of both worlds. It has the "uniquely identifying" part, but it
> also has a part that is human-readable and useful for that reason.
>
> Linus
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>
just my $2
(as for the "+" and "-" tough to say, I'm happy as is,
as for the mistake with the version number well, "your human").

:-)

Justin P. Mattock