Re: kernel maintenance

[Bill Hogan <bhogan@rahul.net>]

"AB" == Alvar Bray <alvar@meiko.co.uk> writes:

  AB> Hi Bill,

  AB> In general a non-debian source code file e.g. foo is related to the
  AB> debian package foo.deb as follows:

  AB> foo                     Original src
  AB> |
  AB> | foo.diff.gz          Debian diffs
  AB> v
  AB> foo.tar.gz                Debianized src 
  AB> |
  AB> | debian.rules         Makefile in src package
  AB> V
  AB> foo.deb                  Debian package

  AB> i.e. the the diff are relative to the original src code.
  AB> There can be some confusion here sometimes when the debian name and
  AB> the original name differ e.g. for the man package the original src
  AB> package is called man_db not man. Also there can be some complications
  AB> when one debian src package creates several debian packages.

  AB> In the case of the debian source package this is both the the debian
  AB> src and .deb package combined. You can install it and the use the
  AB> debian.rules makefile to recreate itself. It is different from Linus`
  AB> source release because it includes debian.rules etc. and some patches -
  AB> ppp2.2 and accounting for example. I suspect there might be a .diff
  AB> file somewhere but is probably only useful for creating newer
  AB> packages.

  AB> Hope this makes things clearer.

  AB> alvar

    Hi, Alvar.

    Thank you, this is much clearer and also more to the point.

    Specifically, does kernel support for _modules_ qualify as a patch
or is it an inseparable part of the kernel?

    Bill