linux-kernel - Re: kbuild: Fix the breakage caused by "improve version string logic"

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Date:	Tue, 8 Jun 2010 02:13:14 -0700 (PDT)
From:	David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>
To:	Boaz Harrosh <bharrosh@...asas.com>
cc:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>, Frans Pop <elendil@...net.nl>,
	Dirk Hohndel <hohndel@...radead.org>,
	Len Brown <lenb@...nel.org>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: kbuild: Fix the breakage caused by "improve version string
 logic"

On Tue, 8 Jun 2010, Boaz Harrosh wrote:

> 
> The patch: 85a256d8e0116c8f5ad276730830f5d4d473344d
> 	Author: David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>
> 	Title: kbuild: improve version string logic
> 
> Broke none Linus trees that supply their own version string and
> tag system via a presence of a localversion* file at the Kernel's
> root subdirectory.
> 
> After This patch. The "+" (plus) is not added if a localversion*
> file is present or a CONFIG_LOCALVERSION is configured.
> 

The only reason the `+' is being appended to your version string is 
because your scm is reporting that there have been commits to the tree 
since the last release; for git, that means anything that isn't at a 
tagged commit.

If you were to create a tarball of your tree, for instance, and distribute 
it to someone else, there would be no appended `+' because there is no 
revision history.  The `+' being appended simply implies that you're 
beyond the base kernel version in an scm.  The motivation is to be more 
descriptive about what kernel is being run: the most common case where 
this comes into play is when someone is running a kernel off of Linus' 
tree and a bug report incorrectly shows that it is a vanilla 2.6.35-rc2 
kernel, for instance.

When we discussed adding this indicator of revision history, we explicitly 
noted that the `+' is a modification of the base kernel version, not the 
entire string.

As mentioned previously, you can easily suppress that from being added by 
using "make LOCALVERSION=-foo" to create a 2.6.35-rc2-foo kernel when you 
do not have CONFIG_LOCALVERSION_AUTO enabled.  You already found that you 
cannot pass an empty LOCALVERSION string, so it must be something to 
identify itself as unique from vanilla 2.6.35-rc2.

The usecase that you've cited before is your colleagues pulling your git 
tree and then getting this `+' appended when they really don't want it.  
Although localversion* files are better than (ab)using the EXTRAVERSION 
variable in the Makefile, they won't suppress the `+' because your 
revision history shows that you're beyond a released (tagged) kernel.  The 
solution is to use git-tag to indicate your particular version of Linux 
that differentiates it from vanilla 2.6.35-rc2 and pass along your version 
information with either localversion* files or CONFIG_LOCALVERSION if you 
package your .config as well.
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