Frequently Asked Questions when using git
How can I find out which Linux versions exist?
The probably easiest way for a quick search is the web interface to
our
git repository.
The second section is titled "tags" - a tag is a symbolic label for a
specific version of the Linux kernel tree. For example, one line
shows the tag "v2.6.21" - this is the "official" name of Linus
Torvald's 2.6.21 kernel release. If you check out this exact version,
you get the same code you get when downloading the 2.6.21 kernel from
kernel.org.
The line before shows tag "DENX-v2.6.21" - this is a tag created by
us, to identify the version of of the DENX linux tree that
corresponds to 2.6.21 - in other words, this is the 2.6.21 kernel.org
tree
plus all DEX specific extensions and fixes which were not
pushed upstream yet.
Similar a few lines above: one line shows the "v2.6.21.1" release of
the official "stable" kernel tree 2.6.21.y, while the tag in the line
before, "DENX-v2.6.21.1", is the corresponding version with all the
DENX stuff in.
Does DENX have support for 2.6.19?
To answer this question, you would have to open the next page of the
tags list, and search until you find:
4 months ago DENX-v2.6.19 DENX 2.6.19 release tag|commit|shortlog|log
If you now click on the
"DENX-v2.6.19" link, you open a page that reads:
...
[PATCH] ppc: Update sequoia defconfig file DENX-v2.6.19
author Stefan Roese <sr@denx.de>
Fri, 5 Jan 2007 10:12:24 +0000 (11:12 +0100)
committer Stefan Roese <sr@denx.de>
Fri, 5 Jan 2007 10:12:24 +0000 (11:12 +0100)
commit f0319868c0dad6e29e352a90916cd3f41431f6a0
tree 544fa7b9c79508a965e0793f566cea89ed3219fe tree | snapshot
parent 12e8054abea8f9c02dc19b1063fa82a2ded1ca0e commit | diff
...
By just clicking on the "snapshot" link you can download a
(compressed) tarball of this specific version.
In other words: all versions are available to everybody every time.
Does DENX have support for the 440GX processor?
This simple question requires a more complicated answer. You could of
course browse the change logs of the git commits and search for 440GX
or so to find out if and when support for it was added. But this is
not a quick and easy solution.
It is probably easier to look for a specific board. Ok, 440GX means
"ocotea" or "taishan". Thus check the Linux FTP directories for these
two boards:
For the
Ocotea board you
find:
uImage-DENX-2.6.20-rc6-g91109bff 1153 KB 02/01/07 17:25:00
uImage-DENX-2005-10-02-1830 931 KB 10/02/05 00:00:00
uImage-DENX-2005-11-11-1250 928 KB 11/11/05 00:00:00
uImage-DENX-2005-12-03-2208 1072 KB 12/03/05 00:00:00
uImage-DENX-v2.6.14 936 KB 10/29/05 00:00:00
uImage-DENX-v2.6.15 1072 KB 01/15/06 00:00:00
uImage-DENX-v2.6.19 1158 KB 01/05/07 14:46:00
So for the Ocotea board the answer is easy:
Linux has been supported on this board since
Linux version 2.6.14 and before.
The same method applies for the Taishan board.
However, with other boards like the 440SPe Katmai the situation is not so simple -
here we get this:
uImage-DENX-2.6.20-g22eadc0e 1206 KB 03/02/07 06:30:00
uImage-g0b70c3e1 1221 KB 03/15/07 12:46:00
uImage-g5629e2f9 1222 KB 04/06/07 07:38:00
uImage-gca306f2b 1309 KB 05/16/07 08:27:00
uImage-gff058290 1254 KB 05/08/07 14:20:00
The cryptic strings like "gff058290" in the names stand for
"
git commit ID
ff058290"; now please go back to the
git repository
and enter this ID string ("ff058290") in the "search:" box in the upper
right corner; search for "commit".
This will open a
new page:
Here, to find out, which kernel version this corresponds to, click on
the
"tree" link and
find the line that reads
-rw-r--r-- Makefile blob | history | raw
Now click on the
"blob" link:
The file reads:
1 VERSION = 2
2 PATCHLEVEL = 6
3 SUBLEVEL = 21
4 EXTRAVERSION = .1
So this is a 2.6.21.1 kernel tree...
Sorry, as mentioned before, this is a bit more complicated.
More efficient ways to find this type of information are available to
users who have cloned the DENX git repository so they can use the git
tools to navigate in their loal copy of the repository.
