[fab] Non-standard kernels in the Fedora Multiverse

[Jeremy Katz]

On Mon, 2006-05-08 at 15:53 -0400, Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote:
> 1. If it's okay for RH to put nonstandard kernels into Fedora, then 
> shouldn't it be okay for the community to put nonstandard kernels into 
> Fedora?  If not, why not?

Well, it pretty much *has* to be as a subpackage from the main kernel
package (eg, having everything built from the exact same source tree,
just different config options).  Otherwise, things will inevitably lag
for security issues and there's also a big problem of building kernel
modules.

> 2. Do we keep the Xen kernel close to the standard Fedora kernel?  If so, 
> how do we do that?

See above about it being from the same source tree.

At the same time, this requires a huge effort, and I'm not even sure
we're doing that good of a job with it yet.  Look at rawhide since FC5
to see how often a xen kernel hasn't been present.  And that's usually
because it stopped building, so davej turned it off.  It's essentially a
full time job for Juan to keep things in sync.

> I'd really like to be able to make Planet CCRMA a standard Fedora install 
> by FC7.  Is it possible?

If it's requiring kernel patches that aren't upstream, there's going to
be a lot of shouting.  Because it's only working marginally well right
now with one kernel type that's not upstream.  Introducing another into
the mix makes getting the kernel to build an order of magnitude more
difficult.  So I'm not sure how possible it really is :-/

Jeremy