Pre-release kernel versioning

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

David Woodhouse schrieb:
> On Sun, 2007-04-29 at 15:03 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
>> In short: Kernel like for example kernel-2.6.20-1.3066.fc7 are in
>> reality 2.6.21-rc6-git5. That's not only confusing to users, it also
>> breaks outside kernel modules sometimes; just yesterday I saw a patch in
>> 3rd party repo applied that did this...
>>
>> +-#if LINUX_VERSION_CODE < KERNEL_VERSION(2,6,21)
>> ++#if LINUX_VERSION_CODE < KERNEL_VERSION(2,6,20)
> 
> Those issues happen when you ship a kernel which is neither 2.6.20 nor
> 2.6.21. They don't magically go away if you call it 2.6.21 when in fact
> it's only 2.6.21-rc1.

Ehh, I'm not a kernel-developer and no real programmer at all, but I
can't follow here. Can somebody be so kind and tell me what I missing here?

And sure, I fully understand that compiling a external module might
break if the API that gets used changes between x, (x+1)-rc1 and (x+1).
But that doesn't happen that often.

CU
thl