Project:Distribution Kernel/Bumping kernels

The process of bumping Gentoo dist-kernel packages involves a few helpful scripts that are used to update the ebuilds and build binary kernel packages. The whole process of testing the kernels and building binpkgs is done in a Docker container, so that it can be reliably reproduced on different hosts, as well as done remotely. This document describes the bumping process.

When are dist-kernels bumped?
Dist-kernels are bumped after the Gentoo kernel team releases new genpatches tarball, i.e. after are bumped.

However, it is useful to monitor or upstream release feeds, and start preparing the build containers as described below.

Platforms
At the moment, dist-kernel packages are built for amd64, arm64, ppc64le and x86 platforms. Normally, the arm64 and ppc64le builds are done using the relevant devboxes, so if you're planning on bumping the kernels, please request access to them. If you do not own a beefy amd64 box, you may want to also perform amd64 and/or x86 builds remotely.

The boxes used to build kernels do not need to be running Gentoo. They only need a running Docker daemon and your user needs to have permissions to use it.

Initial local box setup
On the development box, install the Docker client and helpful scripts used to bump kernels:

Clone the scripts used to build packages:

Inside the repository, create a file called localconfig.bash and put the remote hosts used to build kernels inside. For example, for arm64/ppc64le devboxes you'd use:

If you're also going to perform amd64/x86 builds remotely, add appropriate hosts with AMD64 and X86 suffixes.