Zongyun Lai
2007-Apr-07 06:45 UTC
[Xen-devel] The differences between two patch methods in Xen?
Hi all,
I am new to Xen. I have gone through the source code directory of
xen-unstable, and have kept a log of all the compiling procedure. I noticed
that ''make dist-kernels'' command will apply patches
from ''patches/linux-2.6.18/'' to the vanilla kernel. And after
that, the
command will apply the the so-call ''arch-xen patches''
in ''linux-2.6-xen-sparse'' directory to the patched kernel by
running ./mkbuildtree command. I found that this procedure is actually
not ''patching'', but just overwrite some .c, .h, Kconfig and
Makefile in
the ''linux-2.6.18-xen'' by symbolic links to the
''linux-2.6-xen-sparse''
directory.
So, my question is what is the differences between the two patch
mechanisms, one in the ''patches'' directory, and the other in
the ''linux-2.6-xen-sparse'' directory? That is to say, what is
the reason to
keep them separate instead of keeping them in a common patch pool?
Cheers,
Zongyun
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Mark Williamson
2007-Apr-07 15:27 UTC
Re: [Xen-devel] The differences between two patch methods in Xen?
IIRC, the patches directory contains patches that aren''t directly part of the Xen modifications (e.g. stuff that is going into upstream Linux independent of the Xen patches, or stuff that''s been backported from a later kernel release). The sparse tree is intended for Xen stuff that the developers want to be able to view and edit in a convenient way (don''t have to regenerate and reapply patches before rebuilding each time something is changed in the code - instead, the sparse tree files are symlinked into the Linux source directory, so changes show up immediately). HTH, Cheers, Mark On Sat, 2007-04-07 at 14:45 +0800, Zongyun Lai wrote:> Hi all, > I am new to Xen. I have gone through the source code directory of > xen-unstable, and have kept a log of all the compiling procedure. I noticed > that ''make dist-kernels'' command will apply patches > from ''patches/linux-2.6.18/'' to the vanilla kernel. And after that, the > command will apply the the so-call ''arch-xen patches'' > in ''linux-2.6-xen-sparse'' directory to the patched kernel by > running ./mkbuildtree command. I found that this procedure is actually > not ''patching'', but just overwrite some .c, .h, Kconfig and Makefile in > the ''linux-2.6.18-xen'' by symbolic links to the ''linux-2.6-xen-sparse'' > directory. > So, my question is what is the differences between the two patch > mechanisms, one in the ''patches'' directory, and the other in > the ''linux-2.6-xen-sparse'' directory? That is to say, what is the reason to > keep them separate instead of keeping them in a common patch pool? > > Cheers, > Zongyun > > > _______________________________________________ > Xen-devel mailing list > Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com > http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel_______________________________________________ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel