Hi!
I have FC 5, and I've patched my 2.6.18-1.2257 kernel in a few spots. Now, I'd like to download and build later kernel sources, but I don't want to loose my patches.
I know that if I maintain a separate source tree, can can just diff and patch, but that seems slow, storage intensive, and error prone. Is there some well established way to keep just the patches in a particular spot, where they are always incorporated into a kernel build?

Thanks!


Charlweed

Nope, and besides these patches may not work for newer kernels for a number of reasons.

The only way to move patches from one kernel rev to another is via patch files, unless you want to retype them each time. What I do for alsa development work, is I make a copy of the file I'm getting ready to modify (not the entire tree). Then I can run diff -u on the two files to generate a unified patch file (i.e. diff -u foo.c.orig foo.c > foo.patch). This should either be done from the kernel source root directory, or the full patch from the kernel root should be added to the second line of the patch file (the line starting with +++ and the updated filename). Then this patch file can be moved around.

To build your patch into a new kernel rpm, you will need the src.rpm file. Install it into the rpm build area, copy your patch files into the SOURCES directory, then edit the SPECS/<kernel>.spec file to add your patch during the pre-build stage where appropriate. You can then rebuild the rpms with rpmbuild, and the new src.rpm that it generates will also have the patch files.