Re: Soft scrolling on framebuffer consoles - with GPM Handling - revised for kernel 6.18.28 (etc.)

Hello, Ben.

On Wed, May 13, 2026 at 08:31:31 -0400, Ben Knoble wrote:
> Hi Alan,

> > Le 13 mai 2026 à 07:47, Alan Mackenzie <[email protected]> a écrit :
> > On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 20:24:15 -0400, Ben Knoble wrote:

[ .... ]

> >> However, using /etc/portage/patches (or w/e the path is; on mobile) it
> >> should be possible to make use of the patch somewhat easy?

> > Thanks for the idea!  I've used /etc/portage/patches before for a couple
> > of personal enhancements.

> > Thanks for the link to the pertinent wiki page, Alexis.  It was useful.

> > The patch should pretty much work as it is in /etc/portage/patches.  I
> > just need to work out precisely how to say "apply to version 6.18.26
> > onwards" in the patch file path.  I was wondering how to specify the
> > option -p1 to patch (that's the option which ignores the first component
> > of the file paths when searching for source files to amend), but it seems
> > this is the default anyway.

> > The only problem I see is that when the kernel's console code gets
> > further enhanced and the patch no longer applies, it could take me some
> > while (possibly two or three days) to update the patch.  This would be
> > inconvenient (kernel builds failing) for those with the patch already in
> > /etc/portage/patches.

> That is indeed a concern; see
> https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo/pull/46238 where I had to rebase a
> Gentoo-carried patch for Git. I imagine you’d do something similar.

> > So I'll take a closer look at this.  Hopefully it will be as simple as
> > asking people to do

> >    # mv .../6.18.28-GPM-NO-MD.20260511.diff /etc/portage/patches/...

It seems there is no finer granularity in the /etc/portage/patches/
mechanism than "apply to all versions" or "apply to this particular
version".  The latter doesn't make much sense, since if you have to make
a new directory each time there's a new kernel, you might as well just
apply the patch by hand.

So I think the best available is:

# mkdir -p /etc/portage/patches/sys-kernel/gentoo-sources
# mv .../6.18.28-GPM-NO-MD.20260511.diff \
 /etc/portage/patches/sys-kernel/gentoo-sources/

..  As already mentioned, this will carry on working until it doesn't, at
which point it will block the merging of further kernels until amended.

When I post the next amended version of the patch, I will amend the
instructions for using it.

> Best of luck. Glad I could help!

Thanks!

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).