[PATCH] Add text for dealing with "dot releases" to README

The emergence of so-called "dot releases" that are non-incremental patches against a base kernel requires different handling of patches (revert previous patches before applying the newest one). This patch adds a paragrach to $TOPDIR/README explaining how to do deal with dot release patches. Signed-off-by: Kurt Wall <kwall@kurtwerks.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

[PATCH] Add text for dealing with "dot releases" to README
The emergence of so-called "dot releases" that are non-incremental patches against a base kernel requires different handling of patches (revert previous patches before applying the newest one). This patch adds a paragrach to $TOPDIR/README explaining how to do deal with dot release patches. Signed-off-by: Kurt Wall <kwall@kurtwerks.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Kurt Wall · Linus Torvalds
1 parent e5c2d74917
Showing 1 changed file with 10 additions and 0 deletions Side-by-side Diff
README
@@ -87,6 +87,16 @@
    kernel source.  Patches are applied from the current directory, but
    an alternative directory can be specified as the second argument.
  
+ - If you are upgrading between releases using the stable series patches
+   (for example, patch-2.6.xx.y), note that these "dot-releases" are
+   not incremental and must be applied to the 2.6.xx base tree. For
+   example, if your base kernel is 2.6.12 and you want to apply the
+   2.6.12.3 patch, you do not and indeed must not first apply the
+   2.6.12.1 and 2.6.12.2 patches. Similarly, if you are running kernel
+   version 2.6.12.2 and want to jump to 2.6.12.3, you must first
+   reverse the 2.6.12.2 patch (that is, patch -R) _before_ applying
+   the 2.6.12.3 patch.
+
  - Make sure you have no stale .o files and dependencies lying around:
  
 		cd linux
...	...	@@ -87,6 +87,16 @@
87	87	kernel source. Patches are applied from the current directory, but
88	88	an alternative directory can be specified as the second argument.
89	89
	90	+ - If you are upgrading between releases using the stable series patches
	91	+ (for example, patch-2.6.xx.y), note that these "dot-releases" are
	92	+ not incremental and must be applied to the 2.6.xx base tree. For
	93	+ example, if your base kernel is 2.6.12 and you want to apply the
	94	+ 2.6.12.3 patch, you do not and indeed must not first apply the
	95	+ 2.6.12.1 and 2.6.12.2 patches. Similarly, if you are running kernel
	96	+ version 2.6.12.2 and want to jump to 2.6.12.3, you must first
	97	+ reverse the 2.6.12.2 patch (that is, patch -R) _before_ applying
	98	+ the 2.6.12.3 patch.
	99	+
90	100	- Make sure you have no stale .o files and dependencies lying around:
91	101
92	102	cd linux