Curated Patch Queue & Upstreaming Policy¶

Rules governing the inclusion, maintenance, and upstreaming of custom Linux kernel patches in cordanaLLM/nucleus.

1. Patch Inclusion Criteria¶

Every patch introduced into cordanaLLM/nucleus must meet all of the following conditions: 1. Targeted Justification: Must address a verified performance, hardware enablement, or security need not yet merged in the upstream release branch. 2. Upstream Path: Must either be queued in an upstream maintainer tree (e.g. tip.git, net-next.git, drm-next.git) or explicitly tracked against an upstream LKML discussion. 3. Clean Application: Must apply cleanly with patch -p1 with zero rejects (*.rej). 4. Isolated Scope: Patches should touch the minimal set of files required and adhere to Linux kernel coding style (scripts/checkpatch.pl).

2. Directory Layout¶

patches/
├── common/             # Applied across all compatible streams
│   └── 0001-sched-ext-tuning.patch
├── bleeding/           # Specific to Linux 7.3-rc
├── mainstream/         # Specific to Linux 7.2.x
└── lts/                # Specific to Linux 6.18.x

3. Retiring Patches¶

When an upstream minor or major release incorporates a previously backported patch: 1. Remove the corresponding patch file from patches/<stream>/. 2. Document the retirement in the PR commit message. 3. Re-verify the build pipeline with scripts/build_kernel.sh.