Hi ! For a given patch I would like to find out if it impacts a given configuration or not. Now of course one could compile the kernel for the configuration prior to the patch, then apply the patch and recompile to find out if there is an impact but I would be looking for some smarter solution. Checking files only unfortunately will not do it, due to ifdefs and friends so make would detect a change and recompile even if the affeted code area is actualy dropped by the preprocessor. What Im trying to do is find out is, how many of the e.g. stable fixes of 4.4-4.4.14 would have impacted a given configuration - the whole exercise is intended for some statistical analysis of bugs in linux-stable. Maybe this is a trivial problem - but I did not find any usable solution so any ideas other than brute force compile/patch/recompile/diff *.o ? thx! hofrat