How to safely backport specific linux kernel commits to an older kernel using git

Question

I'm currently on a stable 2.6.32 kernel. But I need certain fixes on 2.6.33 branch to be incorporated into this 2.6.32 kernel so that I can create a custom kernel for testing purposes. I can't apply the said fixes directly to the 2.6.32 source because they seem to have dependencies on other fixes.

Is there any safe way to incorporate only the fixes (and all their dependencies) I need into the 2.6.32 kernel with git to create a custom kernel?

Assuming there is a way to do the above, is there a way to track the fixes that have been applied to the custom kernel (i.e. track which commits have been applied to the 2.6.32 kernel to create the custom kernel source)?

Answer 1

You can check the merges done by Linus to his tree with git log. Then you can try to pull/merge those yourself. I am not sure though,as to how dependencies will be taken care of here.(IMO when you pull, they should be taken care of).

Answer 2

If you can isolate the individual commits, you can also cherry pick them (choose commits from another branch to commit to your branch).

Also, if you need better visualization of the trees SmartGit is the best I have seen so far.