Hi,
Not subscribed, so please Cc: if you reply...
I'm just jumping in on what is probably a huge overblown thread full of
"make it a config option" suggestions, but regarding the BigIron (NUMA)
(&c) patches ...
Would it be possible to distribute along with the kernel a directory
'unsupported/', or 'patches/', or what have you, then from within the
Makefile (make *config) prompt the user:
Apply unsupported patches (EXPERIMENTAL) [y/N]?
Then, if the user answers 'y', it can simply look for 'filename.patch'
and 'filename.desc'. .patch would of course be the diff, .desc would be
a simple description like:
-----
Support Big Hardware (SGI NUMA)
This patch enables NUMA (Non-Uniform .........
-----
patch should be run twice for each diff - "patch --dry-run" to see if
there would be a conflict, then the real patch. The man page doesn't
mention return values, but I assume it returns non-zero on error.
This might also make it easier (?) to keep locally modified kernels
up-to-date with updated kernels. Even if it doesn't, it shouldn't make
it any more difficult. The primary use for this would probably be
testing for things like Alan Cox or Andreas' patches, but it also seems
like a reasonable thing to do in light of the massive changes and
forking potential of certain commercial patches.
Please note I don't want to debate the merits of forking - I think this
may help prevent it, whether that is good or bad is irrelevant. The
most important thing, imo, is that this requires no changes to the
kernel itself - just some changes to the Makefile and config scripts.
It can also be downloaded seperately as a
"linux-patches-x.y.z-n.tar.bz2" file so as not to bloat the kernel.
(Hmm, then I suppose you could "make patches" and it would wget the most
recent version for your kernel from kernel.org ... anyway)
regards,
Christopher
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Sep 30 2000 - 21:00:21 EST