Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:37:47 -0800 | Subject | Re: [PATCH 5/5] net-next:asix: v2 update VERSION only | From | Grant Grundler <> |
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On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 4:29 PM, <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote: > On Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:52:37 PST, Grant Grundler said: > >> -#define DRIVER_VERSION "26-Sep-2011" >> +#define DRIVER_VERSION "08-Nov-2011" > > Aren't these sort of things more than a tad silly for an in-kernel driver?
Definitely not. Supporting linux device drivers essentially requires some mechanism like this. We could use anything (SHA1, Mayan Calendar, etc). This driver happens to use a ISO-like date code.
Upstream drivers are routinely back ported to distro releases. Version is the primary means for a vendor (like ASIX) to determine what was back ported. Distro maintainers and 1st tier support organizations also need to track versions and "ethtool -i" is the canonical way to look this up on a running system.
grant
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