linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH, v2] kbuild: Improve version string logic

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Date:	Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:24:43 -0700 (PDT)
From:	David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>
To:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>
cc:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Frans Pop <elendil@...net.nl>,
	Dirk Hohndel <hohndel@...radead.org>,
	Len Brown <lenb@...nel.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH, v2] kbuild: Improve version string logic

On Wed, 14 Oct 2009, Ingo Molnar wrote:

> > I don't think you want to do that because it would require the .config 
> > to be posted on bug reports, for example, to determine the setting of 
> > CONFIG_LOCALVERSION_AUTO before you can interpret the kernel version.  
> > In other words, you wouldn't know that "2.6.32-rc4" is actually 200 
> > commits beyond the actual release unless you also know that the 
> > .config has CONFIG_LOCALVERSION_AUTO="none".
> 
> We've come a full circle ...
> 
> That's the current !CONFIG_LOCALVERSION_AUTO status quo ... That was 
> being asked to be preserved for (unspecified) packaging reasons. So
> your suggestion is to do away with that behavior altogether?
> 

I don't think it's helpful to specify a version as "2.6.32-rc4" when in 
reality it has 200 commits beyond the release and I like the addition of 
`+' for !CONFIG_LOCALVERSION_AUTO if we're not at a tagged commit.  
That's what my two patches do so the only time you could get a 
"2.6.32-rc4" version string is for when it's the equivalent of 
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/testing/linux-2.6.32-rc4.tar.bz2 
(and you would actually get that regardless of whether you're using 
CONFIG_LOCALVERSION_AUTO or not).

There's another possible extension that could be made: we could allow 
LOCALVERSION= as passed to "make" to override the added `+' since it is 
used to identify kernel versions by a string anyway; so make 
LOCALVERSION=-slub_fixes would become v2.6.32-rc4-slub_fixes if 
CONFIG_LOCALVERSION_AUTO were disabled, regardless of what commit we're 
at, and v2.6.32-rc4-slub_fixes-00094-g80f5069 if it were enabled.

Regardless of future improvements, I think my two patches allow the kernel 
version to more accurately describe what is running.  That is predicated 
on my belief that "v2.6.32-rc4", though, should never describe _anything_ 
except the kernel.org v2.6.32-rc4 kernel.
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