Re: [PATCH 5/5] net-next:asix: v2 update VERSION only

[Grant Grundler]

On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 4:29 PM,  <Valdis.Kletnieks@xxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:52:37 PST, Grant Grundler said:
>
>> -#define DRIVER_VERSION "26-Sep-2011"
>> +#define DRIVER_VERSION "08-Nov-2011"
>
> Aren't these sort of things more than a tad silly for an in-kernel driver?

Definitely not. Supporting linux device drivers essentially requires
some mechanism like this. We could use anything (SHA1, Mayan Calendar,
etc). This driver happens to use a ISO-like date code.

Upstream drivers are routinely back ported to distro releases. Version
is the primary means for a vendor (like ASIX) to determine what was
back ported. Distro maintainers and 1st tier support organizations
also need to track versions and "ethtool -i" is the canonical way to
look this up on a running system.

grant
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