No more kernel-source(code) ??? (was: rawhide report: 20040623 changes)

[Thomas Vander Stichele]

Hi,

> > > FC2 has an i586 and i686 kernel packages.  The 2.6 kernel is smart
> > > enough to do the athlon optimizations on the fly, so that's one less
> > > arch to build for.  SMP modules appear to be identical to non-SMP.
> > > (From what I've gathered...not sure if there should be a difference
> > > there or not.)

Hm, I'd doubt that.  A diff between a non-smp and smp module tree from
the same kernel release shows a bunch of differences.

> > 
> > Personally, I think that having a kernel-devel package that puts the
> > headers somewhere with both the `uname -r` and arch as part of the path
> > would be useful.  That ends up working very nicely for people doing
> > packaging. 

Yep, this is what I've done and proposed as a general solution for
fedora.us, and Freshrpms is using this as well now.  I'd still like some
more feedback so we can start pushing all these kernel module packages
in fedora.us   I'd like a hand from people that are interested in the
same problem so they can finally be released.

>  Unfortunately, it goes back to making things more difficult
> > for an end-user.  The best thing I've come up with at present for that
> > is to continue to do like is being done now (headers for the current
> > kernel in /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build) and have kernel-devel be in
> > addition to that.  It would be a little bit higher disk space usage, but
> > as kernel-headers would only need to be installed for special cases, I'm
> > not sure that's a huge concern.  Actually, I guess that /lib/modules/
> > $(uname -r)/build could be a symlink to /usr/include/kernel-headers/
> > $(uname -r)/$arch and be included as a broken symlink in the package.
> > That _might_ work for keeping both camps happy.

What I've done is write a python script that checks the contents of the
four kernel rpms, figures out the differences, and creates a tree where
everything that's the same across the four trees is a symlink, and
everything that's not gets copied.

What this means is that the resulting RPM can be installed *on top of*
any of the four kernel rpms, and suddenly you can build for all four at
the same time.  The resulting RPM is a 1.5 MB package; considerably less
than when you would have to install all four, if that were possible in
the first place.

Thomas

Dave/Dina : future TV today ! - http://www.davedina.org/
<-*- thomas (dot) apestaart (dot) org -*->
Lover fair
We'll be looking sharp I swear
I want them all to stop and stare
When we take'em down
<-*- thomas (at) apestaart (dot) org -*->
URGent, best radio on the net - 24/7 ! - http://urgent.fm/