Re: [PATCH] Documentation: changes.rst: add entry for git

[Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>]

On Thu, Aug 3, 2023 at 7:19 PM Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Aug 03, 2023 at 11:07:10AM +0200, Rasmus Villemoes wrote:
> > git is obviously used for development, directly and also
> > indirectly (via checkpatch, get_maintainer and other helper
> > scripts). But it is also invoked during the build to produce the
> > `uname -r` string.
> >
> > It's useful to have some minimal git version one can expect people to
> > use. For now, set a somewhat conservative minimum of 1.8.0, which is
> > already more then ten years old.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Rasmus Villemoes <linux@rasmusvillemoes.dk>
> > ---
> >  Documentation/process/changes.rst | 8 ++++++++
> >  1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)
> >
> > diff --git a/Documentation/process/changes.rst b/Documentation/process/changes.rst
> > index 5561dae94f85..a82c619f4bb2 100644
> > --- a/Documentation/process/changes.rst
> > +++ b/Documentation/process/changes.rst
> > @@ -62,6 +62,7 @@ Sphinx\ [#f1]_         1.7              sphinx-build --version
> >  cpio                   any              cpio --version
> >  GNU tar                1.28             tar --version
> >  gtags (optional)       6.6.5            gtags --version
> > +git                    1.8.0            git --version
> >  ====================== ===============  ========================================
> >
> >  .. [#f1] Sphinx is needed only to build the Kernel documentation
> > @@ -189,6 +190,13 @@ The kernel build requires GNU GLOBAL version 6.6.5 or later to generate
> >  tag files through ``make gtags``.  This is due to its use of the gtags
> >  ``-C (--directory)`` flag.
> >
> > +git
> > +---
> > +
> > +When building with CONFIG_LOCALVERSION_AUTO=y, the build system uses
> > +git to produce a version string of the form
> > +6.4.6-00128-gd78b7f406397, which will be shown e.g. by running `uname -r`.
>
> Isn't this optional?  If git is not installed it just will not use git
> to determine the local version.

Right.
Without git, the suffix "-00128-gd78b7f406397" is not
appended, but you can build the kernel.


>
> So you should put "(optional)" above on the list of tools.
>
> And also, don't pick a specific version like this unless it is that way
> for a reason.  Why not pick a newer one?  Or the last one that the local
> version script can handle properly?



CentOS 7 (plans to retire in 2024) unfortunately
uses a ten-year-old git version.

In CentOS 7,

$ git --version
git version 1.8.3.1



Tagger: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date:   Mon Jun 10 12:34:56 2013 -0700

Git 1.8.3.1





If we are allowed to abandon conservative distros,
I prefer git >= 2.14.0

That supports 'git status --no-optional-locks'



-- 
Best Regards
Masahiro Yamada