Howto for maintaining the linux-lowlatency kernel

The plan for maintaining kernels 12.04 and 12.10 is to keep the source at github, and have apw at UTK pull from there.

The plan for 13.04 is to use a PPA at launchpad (owned by ubuntustudio-kernel team)

All of the below is preliminary, and is not to be used literally.

Prerequisites

If doing maintenance from a ubuntu machine

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-dev-tools debhelper build-essential kernel-wedge kernel-package fakeroot
sudo apt-get build-dep linux-lowlatency

Make sure you have a gpg signing key ready.

Setup multiple releases using Linus tree as reference

Get the Source

Clone Linus main linux tree into a bare git reporitory.

git clone --bare git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git linus-linux.git

Clone generic trees using Linus tree as reference

git clone --reference linus-linux.git git://kernel.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-precise.git ubuntu-precise-lowlatency
git clone --reference linus-linux.git git://kernel.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-quantal.git ubuntu-quantal-lowlatency
git clone --reference linus-linux.git git://kernel.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-raring.git ubuntu-raring-lowlatency

In each repo, add the lowlatency remote, and create a new branch for it (when basing on apw trees):

git remote add lowlatency git://kernel.ubuntu.com/apw/ubuntu-<release>-lowlatency.git
git fetch lowlatency
git checkout -b lowlatency lowlatency/lowlatency

You'll now have the main linux vanilla tree that Linus maintains, and three much smaller Ubuntu linux-generic trees (precise, quantal, raring), which share objects with the tree they refer to (linus-linux.git), each containing a branch for lowlatency.

Update Process

When a tracker bug appears, like this one: LP: #1095799, it is good time to prepare the linux-lowlatency source tree. (In this case, we are updating linux-lowlatency-precise)

First, make sure Linus vanilla tree is up to date.

~/repos/linus-linux.git$ git fetch

Now head to the lowlatency tree, and begin with cleanup (make sure we are in the lowlatency branch). The clean up also adds some extra files, which we will NOT add to the git tree. This procedure is needed in order to have the update script work(next step).

~/repos/ubuntu-precise-lowlatency$ git checkout lowlatency
~/repos/ubuntu-precise-lowlatency$ fakeroot debian/rules clean

Now, were going to do much of the maintenance procedure automatically, by using a script. Basically, it does a rebase against the generic kernel source, and does some nice looking git commits, as well as prepares the debian package for a new release version.

~/repos/ubuntu-precise-lowlatency$ ./debian.lowlatency/etc/update-from-master

If all went fine, the last two lines...

*** verify and tag the release.
    git tag -s -m Lowlatency-3.2.0-36.35 Lowlatency-3.2.0-36.35

...tell you to do a git tag, but before we do that, we need to add one more thing.

Edit the debian changelog, to include the tracker bug

nano debian.lowlatency/changelog

Make it look something like this (with the correct bug report)

linux-lowlatency (3.2.0-36.35) precise-proposed; urgency=low

  [ Kaj Ailomaa ]

  * rebase to Ubuntu-3.2.0-36.56
  * Release Tracking Bug
    - LP: #1095799

Now, we need to redo the last commit by doing:

git commit -a --amend

Now, we do the tag:

git tag -s -m Lowlatency-3.2.0-36.35 Lowlatency-3.2.0-36.35

All done.

First upload to a new remote

First, set up the new remote. For example, calling it zequence.

git remote add zequence git@github.com:zequence/ubuntu-<release>-lowlatency.git
git push -u --tags zequence master
git push -u --tags zequence lowlatency

Now that the remote zequence is set up, future maintenance will just involve the update process, and pushing, like so:

git push --tags zequence lowlatency