Kernel building: how are the "torvalds" and "stable" repos related?

Question

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?

Answer 1

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.)