[rawhide social experiments] kernel-source(code) package removed once again ...

[Bob Arendt]

Arjan van de Ven wrote:
>>If fedora.us accepts the fact that multiple-repos (co)exist, and would
>>be willing to work on interoperability/compatibility I would very much
>>welcome a new kernel module framework outside of Arjan's reach ;)
>>
> 
> You know, YOU and 2 or 3 other people are the reason I entirely stopped
> caring about this. No matter what I do you or those others will just
> flame me and personally attack me. So I rather do just nothing and
> ignore the entire thing.
> 
> 

As a kernel source user, module builder, I'd like to speak in *favor*
of the new kernel src.rpm scheme.

Using mod-versioned kernels, I used to have to rebuild kernel-source
up through the "make dep" stage to get valid kernel headers to compile
against.  It was error-prone; If I didn't change the Makefile
EXTRAVERSION, or copy the correct architecture config file to start
with, I got incompatible headers.  Building a module for multiple
archs, this was repetitious.  OR - I could burn a *lot* of disk space
replicating the kernel source just to build the headers to build
modules against.  Yech.

Now the kernel headers are included with each kernel install!
Fantastic!  No more special builds.  ASCII headers compress really
well, so there's little inflation in binary-kernel rpm size.  And it's
much easier to build & install the 3rd party hardware drivers we use.
Now 3rd party delivered build scripts "just work" since the correct
headers can always be found with the kernel.  Vendors have gotten
fewer callbacks regarding installation.  It no longer depends on the
last state of the /usr/src/linux* since someone last used the
kernel-source.  In fact, it removes the kernel-source requirement
entirely.

Better yet, the kernel src.rpm now gives me direct visibility into the
patches that RedHat's applied.  kernel-source always used to bug me,
since all I got was the post-patched kernel-source without much info
on how it differed from kernel.org's version.  If I just "rpm -i", I
get the virgin kernel source tarball in the ./SOURCES directory.  With
"rpmbuild -bp " I get the RedHat patched kernel, equivalent to
kernel-source.  Better yet, I can look in kernel.spec and see the
patches applied (with comments) one-by-one.  Though the src.rpm had
been available, I'd never really looked at it since most of the
literature (well .. web-searches) steered me towards kernel-source.

Arjan's write-up here: http://fedoranews.org/colin/fnu/issue14.shtml
seemed to cover the history and issues pretty well.  It would be good
to get this written up in a HOWTO or some more easily findable docs.
Especially prior to RHEL4, where I'd expect to see some quality docs
on these procedures, delivered as part of RHEL4 documentation.

Good work Arjan.

Cheers, -Bob Arendt