This is a complex use case and probably can be simplified but this is how it happened for me.

I had this in my local.conf:

MACHINE ??= "intel-corei7-64"
PREFERRED_VERSION_linux-intel = "4.12%"
PREFERRED_PROVIDER_virtual/kernel = "linux-yocto"

When I executed:

bitbake -c devshell virtual/kernel

Everything worked for the first time. After that I changed the provider to linux-intel to check something and changed linux-intel version to 4.9:

bitbake -c devshell virtual/kernel

If I switch back to linux-yocto after this -

Now everytime I do -c devshell even for linux-intel, I am being taken to the same kernel source directory i.e. for linux-yocto 4.12 version. bitbake is unable to check that it should be unpacking linux-intel again and behaves as if both linux-yocto and linux-intel are same thing.

If I do bitbake linux-intel, I get this:

ERROR: linux-intel-4.9.76+gitAUTOINC+0c0ae2d617_6e69421d39-r0 do_kernel_version_sanity_check: Package Version (4.9.76+gitAUTOINC+0c0ae2d617_6e69421d39) does not match of kernel being built (4.12.19). Please update the PV variable to match the kernel source or set KERNEL_VERSION_SANITY_SKIP="1" in your recipe.
ERROR: linux-intel-4.9.76+gitAUTOINC+0c0ae2d617_6e69421d39-r0 do_kernel_version_sanity_check: Function failed: do_kernel_version_sanity_check (log file is located at /home/anmitta2/work/poky/build/tmp/work/corei7-64-intel-common-poky-linux/linux-intel/4.9.76+gitAUTOINC+0c0ae2d617_6e69421d39-r0/temp/log.do_kernel_version_sanity_check.7010)
ERROR: Logfile of failure stored in: /home/anmitta2/work/poky/build/tmp/work/corei7-64-intel-common-poky-linux/linux-intel/4.9.76+gitAUTOINC+0c0ae2d617_6e69421d39-r0/temp/log.do_kernel_version_sanity_check.7010
ERROR: Task (/home/anmitta2/work/poky/meta-intel/recipes-kernel/linux/linux-intel_4.9.bb:do_kernel_version_sanity_check) failed with exit code '1'