Kernel Patching

[TimWoodham]

Hi All,

The occasional patch from Freescale for the iMX28 has posed some questions on how to patch the kernel.

I see in the ltib/rpm/BUILD/linux/patches stores a bunch of patches and I'd like to know how others are patching their kernels.

We're running the 2.6.35 kernel and would like to hear some comments on how others have patched their kernel and manage the source control of it.

Thanks,

Tim

[DirkBehme]

As far as I know your linux/patches directory contains a number of patch files and a file called 'series'. E.g.:

0001-foo1.patch

0002-foo2.patch

...

series

Is this correct? The file 'series' is a text file containing the list of the 000x-... patch files?

If so, these are the patches extracted from git which have to go on top of the stock 2.6.35 kernel and which can be handled with a tool called 'quilt' and/or git.

For quilt see

http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/quilt

http://suse.de/~agruen/quilt.pdf

Before applying the patches to the kernel, clone the stock base kernel you need (e.g. 2.6.35) by git from kernel.org. Then copy the 'patches' directory containing the 000x-... patch files and the series file into the top level kernel directory. Now you have to options:

1) Quilt:

quilt push -a

which should result in applying all the patches to the kernel.org kernel. Note that you can undo the patches with 'quilt pop -a'

2) git:

git am patches/*

which should result in a kernel with all the patches applied in git.

And maybe you have a third option:

Check the Freescale git

http://git.freescale.com/git/cgit.cgi/imx/linux-2.6-imx.git/

if it has a branch with all your patches already applied. The you can skip applying the patches on your own. Instead, directly check out the branch you like which has already all your patches applied.