[ofa-general] ANNOUNCE: ofed kernel build updates

[Michael S. Tsirkin]

Hi!
I'd like to announce a couple of updates that were recently made
to the build scripts on the ofed_kernel branch.
This is an attempt to answer repeated requests, aired at Sonoma,
to simplify access to kernel sources.

The idea is that a user of a supported kernel will just be able
to download an appropriate tarball and run with it without need for patching.

These changes are available from ofed_kernel git tree maintained by Vlad:
git://git.openfabrics.org/~vlad/ofed_kernel.git ofed_kernel

The code is mine, but the ideas mostly come from criticism
and code sent by Ira Weiny. Thanks, Ira!

Note that the changes were made in a backwards-compatible way,
so that existing scripts using configure/make will continue working.

What's new:

1. New script ofed_scripts/ofed_patch.sh
   This will apply fixes and backport patches for a specific
   kernel to the current tree.
   Usage:
   ./ofed_scripts/ofed_patch.sh --with-backport=VERSION

   This makes it possible for distro vendors to generate
   a tarball pre-patched for a specific kernel.

2. New script ofed_scripts/ofed_makedist.sh
   This script repeatedly clones the current repository,
   runs ofed_scripts/ofed_patch.sh,
   and then builds tarballs of ofed kernel source pre-patched
   for supported kernel versions.

   I plan to work with Vlad to run this script as part of
   nightly builds, so that prepatched tarballs will become
   available for download.

3. configure script made re-entrant
   configure script does not apply patches anymore:
   all it does is create configure.mk.kernel and autoconf.h files.

   This finally makes it possible to change
   configuration parameters just by re-running configure.

   For backwards-compatibility, if configure detects
   that ofed_scripts/ofed_patch.sh was not run yet,
   it prints a warning and runs it automatically.

Feedback wellcome.

-- 
MST