There are four lines at the top of the top-level Makefile
VERSION = 3 PATCHLEVEL = 18 SUBLEVEL = 7 EXTRAVERSION =
The values ββare different for different versions of the kernel, of course. They are used to build the version string, so changing them before creating the kernel changes the version string of the kernel that you create.
In addition, there is a CONFIG_LOCALVERSION configuration CONFIG_LOCALVERSION , which is located under General Setup -> Local version - append to kernel release in the make menuconfig , which is added to this.
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