[fab] Alternative kernels?

[Christopher Blizzard]

Jeremy Katz wrote:
> If we allow arbitrary kernels that are maintained in Extras, how do we
> make sure that there's actually a consistent set of features provided?
> And that's ignoring the questions of currency and handling of security
> errata, which is already hard enough.

In the case of the planet kernel, does it matter?  It's for a very 
specific use.  We're not always talking about the general use case.  Be 
it the planet kernel or the OLPC kernel, there's more than one use case 
here.  Sometimes it makes a lot of sense to have a different kind of kernel.

> Additionally, more kernels ==> more pain for kernel module packagers.
> Now they need to know about even _more_ variants and be able to build
> against them.

Does it?  You're assuming that everyone pays for the pain for everyone 
else's work.  I assume that some of that work will spill over to the 
kernel packagers that we have today, but it's not going to be all of it. 
  I think that enabling various uses is probably worth the pain, and the 
mechanisms will work themselves out.  Maybe Dave will go a little crazy, 
but maybe this will help him as well.  Maybe other people will be able 
to step up and be able to actually help him with that work.  But we 
can't even begin to tell that without taking the first step and saying 
it's OK for other people to enter that space.

> These are the things that concern me a lot about more kernels.  Lack of
> focus on the mainline kernel and wanting to focus on getting the patches
> upstream is more of a secondary concern :)

:)

--Chris