Trimming the Work Environment
In working on the device driver I mentioned earlier, I don’t apply the patches to a normal Linux kernel tree. Instead, I use a repository that contains only a snapshot of the source files and headers that are relevant to Infiniband development. This repository is 1% of the size of a kernel repository, so it’s easier to work with.
I then choose a “base” version on top of which the patches are applied. This is a snapshot of the Linux kernel tree as of a revision of my choosing. When I take the snapshot, I record the changeset ID from the kernel repository in the commit message. Since the snapshot preserves the “shape” and content of the relevant parts of the kernel tree, I can apply my patches on top of either my tiny repository or a normal kernel tree.
Normally, the base tree atop which the patches apply should be a snapshot of a very recent upstream tree. This best facilitates the development of patches that can easily be submitted upstream with few or no modifications.
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