KERNELRELEASE is used to represent the kernel “ABI”, it’s the same because the kernel ABI hasn’t changed. In other words you should be able to upgrade the kernel. We followed the same convention used in debian. For example:
https://packages.debian.org/sid/linux-image-5.9.0-3-amd64
We can push updates/fixes and build a new version of the same package.
You can potentially install several kernel packages for different kernel versions (different ABI).
If you want to know more details about the version, you can use dpkg -l to list all packages, and you will see something like this:
ii linux-image-4.14.0-qcomlt-arm64 4.14.96-00726-g8bdd343f96dc-45 arm64 Linux kernel, version 4.14.0-qcomlt-arm64
We put the commit hash in the version string, along with the exact kernel version (4.14.96) and our build number. That string tells you the kernel commit is 8bdd343f96dc. e.g.
https://git.linaro.org/landing-teams/working/qualcomm/kernel.git/commit/?id=8bdd343f96dc