Re: [PATCH v10 05/10] livepatch: Support separate list for replaced patches.

From: Josh Poimboeuf
Date: Tue Apr 10 2018 - 13:47:34 EST


> > I agree here. Practically we use only cumulative replacement patches at
> > SUSE. So with that in mind I don't care about the stacking much. But, it
> > may make sense for someone else. Evgenii mentioned they used it for
> > hotfixes. Therefore I'm reluctant to remove it completely.
>
> Well, it was convenient in some cases to provide a hot fix for a given bug
> on top of our official cumulative patch. So far, such fixes were only used
> on a few of the customers' machines (where they were needed ASAP). It just
> made it easier to see where is the common set of fixes and where is the
> customer-specific addition.
>
> I think, we can use cumulative patches in such cases too without much
> additional effort. For example, we can encode the distinction (base set of
> fixes + addition) in the module name or somewhere else.
>
> So, I think, it is fine for us, if stacking support is removed. Especially
> if that makes the implementation of livepatch less complex and more
> reliable.

Just to clarify, I think we are just proposing the removal of the
enforcement of the stacking order. We will still allow multiple
non-replace patches to be applied. We just won't enforce which patches
can be disabled/removed at any given time.

So I think your old way of doing things (individual unrelated patches on
top of a cumulative patch) would still work.

--
Josh