linux-patch packaging best practice.

[Pete Graner]

On Tue, 2010-08-10 at 14:33 -0400, Tim Nowaczyk wrote:
> On Aug 10, 2010, at 12:09 PM, Tim Gardner wrote:
> 
> > Tim - we're all pretty much git centric and do development ala the upstream kernel community. As such we (the kernel team) don't apply patches to the source package, rather we commit a patch to a local git repository and rebuild. There is a boat load of information in the wiki beginning at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel about how we maintain the Ubuntu kernel.
> > 
> I must not have made myself clear.  I'm not trying to get a patch included in the default ubuntu kernel.  In hardy, there were packages like, linux-patch-evms, linux-patch-lustre, and linux-patch-aufs, that would allow the system administrator to add functionality to the kernel on specific systems by installing one of those packages, then runniing make-kpkg --added-patches evms, for example, to build a kernel with the evms extensions.  I created a package that bundled up the web100 patches this way (http://www.web100.org/)  I see that the three previously mentioned packages aren't in lucid.  I installed linux-patch-tomoyo on my lucid machine to see what the new practice is, but it's README says to run "make-kpkg --added-patches", even though "--added-patches" no longer works on lucid (I guess I should file a documentation bug).  So, I think my question still remains unanswered.  Is there a new framework in place in Ubuntu for patching the kernel on an individual machine?  Or 
>  is the only solution to update my documentation to say...

Thats not what Tim G. was saying. You need to apply those patches to the
a local copy of the Ubuntu git tree and build the kernel from source.
The pointers he gave you will tell you how to check out a copy of the
tree, apply the patches and build/package.

> 
> apt-get install linux-patch-web100
> cd /usr/src/linux
> ../kernel-patches/all/apply/web100
> make-kpkg ...
> 
> The web100 patches don't create modules, so I think that means I can't use dkms, right?
> 

Correct, you have to patch the core kernel sources.

~pete
-- 
Pete Graner     <pgraner at canonical.com>
Manager         
Ubuntu Kernel   
Canonical Ltd.  http://www.canonical.com/