In Debian terminology, when you run
apt-get source linux-image-3.19.0-trunk-amd64
(or the equivalent apt-get source linux
), you're actually downloading and extracting the source package. This contains the upstream code (the kernel source code downloaded from kernel.org) and all the Debian packaging, including patches added to the kernel by the Debian kernel team.
When you run
apt-get install linux-source-3.19
you're actualling installing a binary package which happens to contain the source code of the Linux kernel with the Debian patches applied and none of the Debian packaging infrastructure.
The source package's name is just linux
; apt-get source
will convert any binary package name it is given into the corresponding source package name.
By the way, since experimental
packages aren't upgraded automatically, you should make sure you've updated your copy of linux-source-3.19
and re-extracted it before comparing; the .dts
file you're seeing in your diff
was introduced in the latest update. The packages currently in the archive all contain this file.
The remaining differences are pretty much normal: as has been indicated in the comments, debian
contains all the packaging and is only in the source package, .pc
is used by quilt
to keep track of the original files modified by patches, and is also only in the source package, and the .1
files are generated manpages, probably a side-effect of the kernel build, and therefore only appear in the binary package (but they shouldn't really be there).
The reference package is the source package, as obtained by apt-get source
. This builds all the kernel binary packages, including linux-source-3.19
which you install with apt-get install
. The latter is provided as a convenience for other packages which may need the kernel source; it's guaranteed to be in the same place all the time, unlike the source package which is just downloaded in the current directory at the time apt-get source
is run.
As far as documentation goes, I'd follow the Debian documentation in the kernel handbook (section 4.5). Rebuilding the full Debian kernel as documented in section 4.2 which you linked to takes a very long time because it builds a number of variants.
Best Answer
Probably, not until Debian bug #754103 is resolved: