Helping bug reporters test upstream kernel patches

[Geir Ove Myhr]

I have been triaging and upstreaming intel graphics bugs for a while
and since more functionality has been moved to the kernel I am often
asked if the reporter could test a kernel patch to a specific kernel
(e.g. latest drm-intel-next or a -rcX), either as a proposed fix or as
part of the debugging. Some of the bug reporters are able to patch and
compile their own kernels, but many are not and asking them to do so
would be equivalent to abandoning the bug report. In some cases I have
built linux-image*.deb and linux-headers*.deb for them on my laptop,
essentially following the instructions at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/GitKernelBuild . I have found this
quite time consuming, especially with increasing difference in kernel
config between Ubuntu versions.

Is there any infrastructure available for building patched kernels
packages of the Ubuntu and mainline kernels? A PPA seems to be a bit
of an overkill, since it builds much more packages than what is needed
for testing. Making avaiable linux-image*.deb and linux-headers*.deb
like Leann has done at http://people.canonical.com/~ogasawara/
(folders lp*) seems more to the point. I also don't know how to
effortlessly put a patched mainline build into a PPA.

Geir Ove