An Investigation of Patch Porting Practices of the Linux Kernel Ecosystem

Open-source software is increasingly reused, complicating the process of patching to repair bugs. In the case of Linux, a distinct ecosystem has formed, with Linux mainline serving as the upstream, stable or long-term-support (LTS) systems forked from mainline, and Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu and Android, as downstreams forked from stable or LTS systems for end-user use. Ideally, when a patch is committed in the Linux upstream, it should not introduce new bugs and be ported to all the applicable …

android bugs case cs.cr cs.se distributions ecosystem investigation kernel linux linux distributions linux kernel lts open-source software patch patching practices process repair software support systems ubuntu upstream