[gentoo-user] Re: Upgrading old kernel

[Jonathan Callen]

On 4/16/20 3:43 AM, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 16/04/2020 10:21, Ashley Dixon wrote:
>> On Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 10:08:45AM +0300, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>>> There's also sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel but it's description is
>>> confusing as
>>> hell: "Linux kernel built with Gentoo patches". Which to me sounds
>>> exactly
>>> like gentoo-kernel-bin just with slightly different wording... :-/
>>
>> The difference can be seen in the ebuild source U.R.I.s:
>>          gentoo-kernel-bin:
>> https://dev.gentoo.org/~mgorny/binpkg/amd64/kernel/ \
>>                  sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel/${MY_P}.xpak
>>          gentoo-kernel: https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/ ... +
>>                  patches from
>> https://dev.gentoo.org/~mpagano/dist/genpatches
>>
>> The wording is horrible, but as the suffix ("-bin") would suggest, the
>> former is
>> a binary  .xpak  package,  whereas  the  latter  is  base  kernel 
>> sources  with
>> additional Gentoo developers' patches.
>
> I still don't understand what that means. If it's a pre-built kernel,
> then it sounds the same as gentoo-kernel-bin. If it's sources, then it
> sounds the same as gentoo-sources.
>

It's neither.  The package installs a kernel (not just sources for the
kernel), like gentoo-kernel-bin, but it does so by building it locally,
just like just about every other package that doesn't have a name ending
in "-bin". On the other hand, gentoo-kernel-bin downloads a precompiled
kernel and just installs it locally, not compiling anything.  The
gentoo-sources package also doesn't compile anything, it just dumps some
source code on your system for you to compile outside of portage.

In short:
                  |  Downloaded  |  Installed
------------------+--------------+-------------
gentoo-sources    | source code  | source code
gentoo-kernel     | source code  | built kernel
gentoo-kernel-bin | built kernel | built kernel

-- 
Jonathan Callen