[Q] Getting the latest available Linux-kernel version (v3.x.y-stable or v3.x.y-rcX)?

Hi,

for my Linux-kernel build-script I am searching for a reliable check of getting the ***latest*** version. This could be 'v3.x.y-stable' or 'v3.x.y-rcX'.

'git tag' seems to be fast, but not reliable. 'git log --oneline' is slow, but does the job.

For getting v3.x.y-stable this seems to work...

$ git tag | grep ^'v3.[0-9]*' | grep -v '\-rc' | sort --version-sort v3.0 v3.1 v3.2 v3.3 v3.4 v3.5 v3.6 v3.7 v3.8 v3.9 v3.10

...but not when listing v3.x.y-rcX, too:

$ git tag | grep ^'v3.[0-9]*' | sort --version-sort | grep ^'v3.10' v3.10 v3.10-rc1 v3.10-rc2 v3.10-rc3 v3.10-rc4 v3.10-rc5 v3.10-rc6 v3.10-rc7

I know that v3.10 > v3.10-rcX, but not 'git tag' or 'sort --version-sort' :-).

This seems from my poor sed/awk/grep skills to be the most reliable method...

$ time git log --oneline v3.0-rc1.. | grep 'Linux 3.' | awk '{ print $3 }' | grep ^'3.[0-9]*' | head -1 3.10

real 0m10.024s user 0m5.611s sys 0m4.857s

...but is slow (even I take v3.0-rc1 as the 1st version-tag of Linux-v3.x series).

Any improvements?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
- Sedat -