What does the line "NAME = ..." stand in the top-level Makefile of a Linux Kernel for?

Question

Currently I try to learn something about modifying the Linux kernel. I found out, that the top-level Makefile in the kernel sources has effect on kernel version and I found out that you can add an EXTRAVERSION here, in my example it looks like this:

VERSION = 3
PATCHLEVEL = 12
SUBLEVEL = 37
EXTRAVERSION = -CUSTOM-0.1
NAME = One Giant Leap for Frogkind

I added -CUSTOM-0.1 to EXTRAVERSION by myself and when I boot my kernel I see changes e.g. in uname -r, but I was surprised by the NAME line. My Question is: What does this variable stand for? The text is senseless and so I wonder if this is just a joke by the developer or if this variable actually has any influence.

I found this kernel in the official git repository of freescale SDK:

http://git.freescale.com/git/cgit.cgi/ppc/sdk/linux.git

Answer 1

First of all, this is not freescale specific - the vanilla linux kernels also contain it: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Makefile

It is essentially the code name of that kernel series.

See

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_kernel_names for a list of kernel code names which have been used so far
• http://www.linuxandlife.com/2012/06/weird-names-of-linux-kernels.html and http://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2011/11/many-names-of-linux-kernels.html for more information.