[Xen-devel] The differences between two patch methods in Xen?

[Zongyun Lai <zlai.zju@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all, 
    I am new to Xen. I have gone through the source code directory of 
xen-unstable, and have kept a log of all the compiling procedure. I noticed 
that 'make dist-kernels' command will apply patches 
from 'patches/linux-2.6.18/' to the vanilla kernel. And after that, the 
command will apply the the so-call 'arch-xen patches' 
in 'linux-2.6-xen-sparse' directory to the patched kernel by 
running ./mkbuildtree command. I found that this procedure is actually 
not 'patching', but just overwrite some .c, .h, Kconfig and Makefile in 
the 'linux-2.6.18-xen' by symbolic links to the 'linux-2.6-xen-sparse' 
directory. 
   So, my question is what is the differences between the two patch 
mechanisms, one in the 'patches' directory, and the other in 
the 'linux-2.6-xen-sparse' directory? That is to say, what is the reason to 
keep them separate instead of keeping them in a common patch pool? 

Cheers, 
          Zongyun


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