When it comes to the Kernel.org kernel repos, there are a couple that stand out as the most current:
- linux/kernel/git/stable
- linux/kernel/git/torvalds
These appear to be mostly non-intersecting in terms of their respective tags. It appears likely that unless I’m working on the bleeding edge I should just stick with cloning “stable” (my current tests are based on existing stable kernels). Is this a correct assumption?
Is the torvalds tree actually a full superset of stable (though it doesn’t seem so, looking at the tags)? If not, as seems likely, how do changes propagate back and forth between the two?
Yes, you’d mostly want to build off stable unless you’re working on bleeding-edge stuff.
Tags are merely pointers to commits – just because one repo has a tag and the other doesn’t doesn’t mean that the commit isn’t present in both repos. (For instance, ‘stable’ could have a tag ‘Foo’ that points to commit ‘A’ – torvalds might also have that commit A as part of some branches, but doesn’t have the named tag.)