Kernel versioning [was Re: Kernel package and modules]

Koen Kooi k.kooi at student.utwente.nl
Tue Aug 5 16:21:25 CEST 2008


Op 5 aug 2008, om 15:57 heeft Mike (mwester) het volgende geschreven:

> Andy Green wrote:
>>
>> You might noticed I called it "module versioning" :-)  But we have
>> another way to come at by EXTRAVERSION with the git hash, that solves
>> another issue too.
>
> Let's re-open the discussion on this, I think there's a better  
> solution.
>
> I remain opposed to the use of the git hash for EXTRAVERSION; that's
> unnecessary and pushes the problem off to others.  (The git hash  
> should
> be, as I proposed (and implemented on my kernels), in the
> "user at buildhost" string where it serves to identity, not do
> configuration management.)
>
> The use of EXTRAVERSION should be a simple sequential integer (perhaps
> combined with some other strings if people desire), bumped up by human
> beings whenever "stable" changes.  It should also be optionally bumped
> up on other branches whenever the developers feel uncomfortable about
> leaving it unchanged (we all know that there are numerous minor tweaks
> that we make that do not impact modules or the ABI for modules, or  
> even
> the data structures they use).
>
> It makes little difference to end users, it makes a world of  
> difference
> to developers (ok, maybe not all of them, but certainly it does for  
> me).
> Right now I can inspect a patch that gets added to the "andy" branch,
> for example, add it to my tree, build, flash a kernel, and see how it
> works.  That's good.
>
> But I'm lazy.  And that means that if I *also* had to package up a
> tarball of all the modules, copy them up to the rootfs, make sure I  
> have
> space, untar them, remember to delete them when done, just so I could
> boot that kernel to do that test, well, it's less likely that I'm  
> going
> to find time to do that.
>
> And the argument that I could go check the git hash thingy in the
> existing rootfs, edit the kernel Makefile to match, and build that is
> also just way too much work to make it likely that I or many others
> would actually bother.
>
> The git hash, as proposed, is a horrible little thing that should be
> there, but not in EXTRAVERSION.  The EXTRAVERSION should be changed  
> as I
> describe above, by humans, because we need for as many people as
> possible to be able to test kernels and kernel-patches, and with the
> current change rate the very last thing we should be considering is
> making it harder for people to help out in the testing effort.
> .openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/devel

EXTRAVERSION implies it is a version, and versions are sortable. Git  
revisions aren't sortabled and hence unsuited to be using in versions.

regards,

Koen
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