Why set CONFIG_LOCALVERSION to ""?

[michaelbaisch]

Hello again,

I would really like to set CONFIG_LOCALVERSION to something meaningful. But the meta-raspberrypi layer is making it really hard, because it's set inconveniently to "" here:

meta-raspberrypi/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-raspberrypi.inc

Line 102 in 3ae288a

kernel_configure_variable LOCALVERSION "\"\""

Can someone tell me if there is a really good reason to do this, or if we can maybe get rid of this line? It also voids the use of LINUX_VERSION_EXTENSION.

Greetings,
Michael

[agherzan]

I can't remember why we did that but I think we should remove it now. I don't see any use of it anymore. And I agree, it renders LINUX_VERSION_EXTENSION useless. Do you mind pushing a PR?

[agherzan]

@kraj @pbrkr Do you remmeber why we reset that config?

[kraj]

We did it after switching to linux-yocto include files which sets it to "-yocto-${LINUX_KERNEL_TYPE}" in do_kernel_configme
but ideally we should not be emptying out CONFIG_LOCALVERSION we should have a weak assignment to set LINUX_VERSION_EXTENSION

so something like below(untested) might be the way to go.

diff --git a/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-raspberrypi.inc b/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-raspberrypi.inc
index ea7f778..6a7df4c 100644
--- a/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-raspberrypi.inc
+++ b/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-raspberrypi.inc
@@ -99,7 +99,7 @@ do_configure_prepend() {
CONF_SED_SCRIPT=""

# Localversion
-    kernel_configure_variable LOCALVERSION "\"\""
+    kernel_configure_variable LOCALVERSION "\"${LINUX_VERSION_EXTENSION}\""

if [ "${INITRAMFS_IMAGE_BUNDLE}" = "1" ]; then
kernel_configure_variable OVERLAY_FS y

[michaelbaisch]

You can see in meta/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-yocto.inc:58:

LINUX_VERSION_EXTENSION ??= "-yocto-${LINUX_KERNEL_TYPE}"

For completeness in meta/classes/kernel-yocto.bbclass:339, in do_kernel_configme(), it's where the value is acutally set:

echo "# Global settings from linux recipe" >> ${B}/.config
echo "CONFIG_LOCALVERSION="\"${LINUX_VERSION_EXTENSION}\" >> ${B}/.config

So I still think removing is the best solution. Nothing won by setting it manually.

[kraj]

@michaelbaisch does it append yocto-xxx string if its not set here ? if so then its wrong.

[michaelbaisch]

Not sure why this would be a problem? But I guess also setting

LINUX_VERSION_EXTENSION ?= ""

would help. Should I also add this in the pull request?

[kraj]

because we are not building linux-yocto, so it will not be correct to append default string from linux-yocto. but if thats not happening then i am fine to punt it.

[agherzan]

@michaelbaisch I think this looks alright so I've kicked the builders.