The package user-mode-linux is built from the debian package linux-source which follows semantic versioning guidelines. The version used for the user-mode-linux package isn't descriptive enough, only using the major and minor release and dropping the minor release.

The package should have the same version as the version of linux-source used to build the binary package. Consider:

    $ apt-cache show user-mode-linux | grep 'Version\|Built-Using'
    Version: 5.10um1
    Built-Using: linux (= 5.10.4-1)
    $ linux --version
    5.10.4

This can result in the user-mode-linux package getting out of sync compared to the linux-source package, potentially loosing some useful patches, bug-fixes and security updates along the way. Since the linux-source package also includes debian-specific kernel patches, it is best to track the linux-source version rather than kernel.org version.

I've written a quick-and-dirty watch file to attempt to track the linux package tags: https://salsa.debian.org/uml-team/user-mode-linux/-/merge_requests/7

thanks,
Christopher Obbard

Hi Christopher,

Thank you for the patch.

Yes. Otherwise, it would warrant a version bump with every update. As
you already mention, Built-Using will give the exact version.

Well, the way it has been managed so far is the maintainer and other
interested users keeping an eye on the updates to linux-source package
and request a (binary-only) rebuild of the user-mode-linux package,
which then picks up the latest linux-source packages' changes.

Ideally, I would like to see an automated way of doing this but so far
this has been done manually.

In the longer run, in the most ideal scenario, user-mode-linux should
be built as one of the targets of the linux package itself. But that
hasn't happened at all.

Thanks. I have merged it into the packaging repository. So this should
now give a nice notifier on the Debian Tracker page, when the linux-
source package is newer.

But requesting a rebuild would still be a manual step.

Hi Ritesh,

Right, that all makes sense. In the meantime a rebuild of
user-mode-linux for Linux 5.10.5 would resolve my immediate issue, so I
will open a new bug for that. I guess resolving #837920 (to build from
src:linux) would also resolve this bug: so I am happy for you to close
this as a duplicate of #837920.


thanks!

Christopher Obbard